ASAMVEDOPANISHAD

BEING BEGINS WHERE BHAAVA ENDS

HARIKESH GANGA

(@ lulu.com)

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HARIKESHGANGA ( @lulu.com)

First Edition: 1974

Fifth Edition: 2001

Seventh Edition: 2010

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ASAMVEDOPANISHAD

PART I

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This is the only authentic and complete edition of the

Asamvedopanishad, which proclaims, “Being begins

where bhaava ends” to reinforce the ancient vedaantic

Nirguna/ Non-identity as both the Means and End of

Self-Realization/ Enlightenment. The mind is all

bhaava, fabricating endless identities, the network of

Maayaa. The root identity, Ahambhaava, seals off

Being/ Truth, which defies all identity. The Upanishad

resurrects the sovereign Socratic Enlightenment,

freeing it of the cobwebs of Plato’s mediation and its

tortuous system-building agenda. Nothing short of

utter Honest Intelligence, unbound by tradition,

culture, custom and their contending dogmas and

doctrines, can lead to True Being. The Upanishad is

severely critical of J. Krishnamurti and his faked-up

freedom of hopping from perception to perception,

moment to moment.

Part II deals with parityaaga satyaagraha, the practice

of vedaanta in actual life, here and now, particularly in

its social dimension, clinching the sterling validity of

the Socratic-Gandian vision all through human life..

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PART I

1. LAGHU GNYAANA

NON-REACTION OR ASAMVEDA

‘Mantravid evaasmi na aatmavid.’1

How odd indeed is it there isn’t in general a more tangible awareness of

what may be beyond immediate or surface experience! And yet the trans-

phenomenal is the essential working hypothesis of the entire temporal frame

of life -- its norms, values and ideals, its reason, belief and faith. Many a

mystic-philosopher of the east and the west has spoken of the Ego as the

source and substance of this ignorance. Accordingly, as all temporal

knowledge proceeds from the Ego, there can be no doubt that such knowledge

is built upon ignorance, though this deficiency is a trifle made good by

invoking faith -- which is again no more than a pis aller. (One who has

realized needs no faith.) In the scriptures the Ego has been in effect identified

with desire (kaama) and the shedding of desire is believed to lead to the

eradication of the Ego. Many an approach has been recommended to this end

and, depending upon the seeker, each one of them may be effective, including

the sundry yogas.

Nevertheless, the problem itself needs not a little further exploration and

refinement. All temporal knowledge as well as experience is the product of

human reaction -- expressing itself in various modes and on various planes,

like perception and conception, instinct and reason, feeling, fancy and

imagination. There is no knowledge or experience that isn’t at bottom the

outcome of this phenomenal reaction and this would apply to the purest

mathematics and the noblest poetry or philosophy. Obviously this can’t be real

Knowing (since how one reacts determines what one knows; even unanimity

of human reaction wouldn’t make it Egoless) and in realizing this much it

should be possible to contemplate a Knowing that would entail no reaction.

Even kaama, on further inquiry, may be seen to be nothing but one mode of

reacting. What is called the Ego is only a structural term for this function of

reacting and it follows that in the absence of reaction there can be no identity

or Ego. (For want of function it can’t help withering away.)

So, if a pure Awareness or Knowing is visualized, one that isn’t the parent or

product of the Ego, evidently the only manner of attaining it is to cease

reacting and so shed the Ego. Thus non-reaction is not only the end, it is also

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the means: the upeya is the upaaya. If all the various ways prescribed for

ending the Ego aim only at a non-reactive Knowing, why not give up reacting

and begin to attain that Awareness? Doubtless this is Gnyaana yoga, yet much

simpler indeed. In Gnyaana yoga, what puts off the tender-hearted is the

unrelenting inquiry into Reality -- even ‘who am I?’ the great key of Ramana

Maharshi -- which can take one to Enlightenment by the shortest, if perhaps

the steepest, route. But if the ‘I’ is only a bundle of reactions and the best

objective understanding is still no more than reaction (Most rationality is

rationalizing closed and contrived.), it shouldn’t be difficult to comprehend

them as such and that should enable us to stop reacting. It is as though one

turned volition against itself and volition willed itself out. But really speaking,

it doesn’t partake of the process of willing even in a negative sense. It is, on

the contrary, an acute realization that volition and reaction bespeak Egotistic

Ignorance and in that very realization the will withers away and one emerges

out of Ignorance. So when reaction completely ceases the ‘I’ -- the root

identity -- is already gone and there can then be no question even like “who

am I?” or “who is the ‘I’ that reacts?” This has, so to speak, a certain

methodological edge over the traditional mode of Gnyaana yoga; indeed it is

‘laghu Gnyaana’, so it seems, even in the sense that it is elementary. A further

advantage with it is that even one to whom the reactive base of the ‘I’ isn’t

self-evident may start very sceptically on a hypothesis and suspend reacting

experimentally, and this should suffice to engender an analogue I-lessness.

When the Ego withers away, all forms of reaction are gone -- the mind, the

‘heart’ and, most important of all, the will. If we pause to consider how much

of our understanding is independent of our volition (or velleity), most of

humanity would have to confess that it is pretty little. When we don’t react,

don’t desire or will, the natural outcome of it is an ever present Awareness,

pure and true, which is Knowing without reacting, without being for or

against anything. It is an Awareness that eludes phenomenal dichotomies

(even freedom and necessity -- freedom too is Egodom), a Knowing which is

Being and Acting as well. (A Gnyaani’s Being is Knowing, so he needs no

learning.) There is no scope here for volition, which is again but the Ego being

for or against anything. (Action is born of Knowing; what is born of willing is

only reaction. In the battle-field Krishna enjoins Arjuna to act, but he could act

only when he quit reacting, becoming servant of God.) The will’s intrusion

between knowing and acting - - to rent them apart to block knowing and take

over the reins of action, can’t continue any longer. All this is very mundane,

there is no trance or ecstasy, but there is no chasm or conflict between the

mundane and the mystic and, in the absence of dichotomies, the sort of

Awareness adumbrated here can be both mundane and mystic at the same

time. Samsaara is Nirvaana.

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2. AMANASKA OR MANONAASA

One morning as Ramana Maharshi was climbing up the Arunaachala hill, his

thigh quite accidentally hit against a bush and disturbed a hive of wasps

behind a dense foliage. The wasps, provoked by the disturbance (how could

they know it was only accidental?), besieged Maharshi’s thigh and went on

stinging (only) the thigh that had offended. Until the wasps could sting his

thigh to their full satisfaction, Maharshi stayed there motionless, telling the

thigh: “Take the consequence of your action.” The thigh got swollen with

acute burning pain. He still managed to climb up the hill and only by evening

could reach Jadaswaami’s cave, where they gave him some milk and fruit.

Until then he had had no food whatever. He spent the night at Virupaaksha

cave. The leg got still more swollen. Seeing it all, Palaniswaami began

applying some gingelly oil to it, but found that in every place the Maharshi

had been stung there was a spike as strong as a wire nail. With great effort he

took out every one of them and gave some treatment. The swelling subsided

after two or three days.

Years later Maharshi was asked: “Since the disturbance of the wasp hive was

accidental, why should it be regretted or atoned for, as if it had been done

intentionally?” and the Sage replied: “If in fact the regretting and atoning is

not his act, what must be the true nature of ‘his’ mind?”2

3. One and none and non-twain are one, being phenomenally none.

4. There is no absolute without the relative, no infinite without the finite,

no eternal without the temporal, no real without the unreal. What is

called Being or Knowing is neither either nor both nor neither of all

either/ors: thus Nirguna.

5. The End is Nirguna; so is the means. The End Itself is the Means.

6. The intellect always proceeds from prior ends and clarifies only the

means. Where the end itself is the means the intellect has no place.

7. There is no subject to know objects in Knowing; there is no other

even to be witnessed. Dichotomy is reaction. Can reason survive

dichotomy?

8. It is irrelevant to a Gnyaani that Gnyaana satisfies the tenets of

reasoning.

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9. “...as soon as a soul is touched with very contemplation -- as it is in

this noble noughting of itself and this high alling of God -- surely and

verily right then dieth all man’s reason.”3

10. The Buddha’s ‘I don’t know’ and the ‘I know that I don’t know’ of

Socrates are the starting point of Knowing. Who is the ‘I’ that doesn’t

know or knows that he doesn’t Know? The knower must die to

Know. ‘I am that I am.’

11. Gnyaana vichaara is no intellectual investigation; on the contrary, it

is investigating the intellect -- by turning the intellect against itself.

To Know is but to unlearn.

12. Aatma vichaara or Self-Inquiry is no intellectual exercise. The

vichaara itself becomes dhyaana or meditation. If you go on earnestly

inquiring ‘who am I?’ -- and you can answer the question only by

unlearning 4 -- your awareness is truly transformed. So it is Gnyaana

by dhyaana.

13. The total fusion of Chit into Sat is Aananda. The nature and function

of intelligence, as Socrates stressed, is to absorb Reality; else chit is

caught in asat (maayaa).

14. Intelligence is in truth Holy. The true task of your intelligence isn’t to

gorge itself with conception, opinion, about Truth purveyed by others

or commentaries on them by yet others. The task of true intelligence,

on the contrary, is to shed the dross of opinion, to unlearn, and stare

itself in the face in that vacuum of simply knowing nothing -- to stare

at the ‘knower’ who is not -- which ends the frenzied tumult of the

mind.

In that Beatitude of utter Stillness, of unwithholding Silence,

intelligence is overrun by Truth.

15.1. To inquire or meditate is to observe one’s own mind, to concentrate

on the warp and weft of consciousness -- and probe who is the mind,

what is consciousness. And when probed to the very Source the mind

and the Ego wither away (manonaasa). In that utter Stillness and

Peace is the dawn of Pure Awareness (Pragnyaana/ Nirvaana).

15.2. Inquiry about Self-Inquiry is no Self-Inquiry; to know about

aatmavichaara is not to know aatmavichaara; Naayamaatmaa

labhyaha aatmavichaarasya vichaarena.5 Anaham vai Brahma

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16. Negative Capability: A great variety of sensuous apprehensions are

transmitted from the Unconscious, if only you had all the

wavelengths to be receptive. The ‘you’ is the unregenerate will that

jams the transmission. Let but the will die, and your entire reception

is attuned to the infinite span of the Unconscious. In that Bliss of

Experience you are not.

There is no volition or velleity in meditation; a thousand selves with

a thousand voices converse in you and in their free concourse what

facets of awareness emerge! You aren’t for or against whatever, you

don’t react. And so the Ego dies and with it all the many selves and

their many voices. In that Infinite Silence you are not -- it’s all

Awareness in Being, nothing to be aware of.

“...the Aloneness of the Only One... Alone with the Alone.”(Al

Hallaaj). Alone all, All One. “Ana’l-Haqq.”7

17. To Know is to Know the ‘knower’ who is not; the knower must die to

Know -- to Be. True Living is Knowing that is Being. It is no

escaping the world. Samsaara is Nirvaana. Samaadhi or Nirvaana is

the Perfect Peace of Total Dissolution “in the which a soul is oned

with God.”8 “Al-baqaa b’ad al-fanaa.”

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18. Knowing is willy-nilly. Where Knowing is Being there is no willing.

Where there is Contemplation, no will. Where no will, no Ego. To

react is not to Know, to Know, not to react.

19. When you cease reacting ‘you’ realize that all reaction is illusion. But

to resolve not to react is to react further.

20. Communication is reaction; Mouna, to wit Shaanti, is the death of the

Ego.

21. When reaction completely ceases the Ego is irretrievably dead -- and

then the Gnyaani can ‘react’ without any Ego. For a Gnyaani’s ‘ego’

is a functional figment with no prior foundation. (A Gunaateeta is

free to assume any guna for the nonce.) Others may identify a

Gnyaani with ‘his’ ‘mind’, but his apparent ego has no subjectivity

(anaham).

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22. STHITAPRAGNYATA

22.1. Time is flux; a Gnyaani knows no flux -- nor fixity.

22.2. Nothing eventuates for one whom nothing affects (Sthitapragnya).

22.3. The Jeevanmukta is not bound by tradition or culture; there are no

morals and manners for him (avyavahaarya); they are only attributed

to him by onlookers.

22.4. Conscience proceeds from the Ego; the Egoless is beyond

conscience.

22.5. “We are the makers of manners.”10

“There is nothing either good or

bad, but thinking makes it so.”11

22.6. Heaven or hell -- or earth -- makes no difference to a Gnyaani.

Sarvam Khalvidam Brahma.12

22.7. Is it Gnyaana to lament birth, to dread rebirth? Did God fear birth

would there be avataars?

22.8. Realization is an Experience only so to speak; really speaking, it is

the absence of all experience (Asamveda). A Gnyaani is no witness

even. Gnyaanamanaham.

23. Desirelessness, not itself desired (nishkaama-nishkaama) called

Gnyaana has few imperatives; Gnyaana may be feebly described,

seldom prescribed for.

24. “Sankaracharya has been criticized for his philosophy of Maya

without understanding his meaning. He made three statements: that

Brahman is real, that the universe is unreal, and that Brahman is the

universe. He did not stop with the second. The third statement

explains the first two; it signifies that when the universe is perceived

apart from Brahman that perception is false and illusory. What it

amounts to is that phenomena are real when experienced as the Self

and illusory when seen apart from the Self" (Ramana Maharshi).

25.1. I don’t think, but thinking I’s, therefore the ‘I’ is -- ‘I’ is the root

thought, pace Descartes. Awareness beyond thought is I-less.

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25.2. You aren’t selfish, selfishness is you; the selfless is Egoless.

26.1. Is it detachment to shed only the objects, not the subject?

Detachment is detachment from the Ego; freedom, freedom from the

Ego.

26.2. Renounce the possessor -- and possession is no more.

26.3. True attachment is unmotivated love -- spontaneous, universal and

limitless; being unconditional and unpossessive, it is true detachment

as well. Possessive love is false attachment; lack of love, spurious

detachment. Love is where desire, the doer, is not. Divya Prema is

Nishkaama Prema.

27. Gnyaana, beyond hope and fear, desire and passion, yet manifests an

amused delight and loving compassion which yield its spontaneous

‘karma’. Nishkaama karma: naishkarmya (wei-wu-wei). Truth is all

Peace, Joy, Love.

28.1. Action willed negates Knowing. When Knowing doesn’t act action is

ignorance. “Mary has chosen that good part, which shall not be taken

away from her.”13

Not that Martha is active and Mary contemplative.

Martha is self-conscious. Her action should be as good as Mary’s

contemplation were it as Egoless. Then her action itself (karma yoga)

would be contemplation.

28.2. Faith is belief without will; unlike belief faith is verbless -- a state in

which you are, not by choosing or acting.

29. The sense of being doer is the sense of doing and the want of it doing

without the doer. Kartaa is karma, naishkarmya karma without

kartaa. Who isn’t a subject is no object either: not being doer isn’t

being done to.

True living involves no doership, to wit, no sense of living.

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30. ANAMNESOPANISHAD

30.1. Essential Socrates

(a) An unexamined life is not worth living.

(b) One must know that one does not know.

(c) Know thyself.

(d) Virtue is knowledge.14

Vice is ignorance.

(e) None does wrong voluntarily.15

(f) Better suffer evil than cause it.

(g) Return good for evil.

(h) Let him who would move the world move himself first.

(i) Society is the individual writ large.

(j)The philosopher can take no part in politics.

(k) Liberated Life: Jeevan Mukti -- Plato, 519c, 540b.

30.2. The function of Reason, according to Socrates, is to seek, not

knowledge, but the Source of knowledge.

30.3. What does the Socratic fusion of virtue and knowledge signify?

Wisdom is Knowing that is Being where there is no willing. Living is

the unfolding of Awareness.

“Socrates: I told you I was born several and that I died one... A

multitude of Socrateses were born with me, from whom little by little

the Socrates stood out who was destined for the magistrates and the

hemlock.”16

30.4. Socrates knew only too well that Truth brooks no muffling up, no

enfeeblement, that Awareness suffers no pusillanimity

(Naayamaatmaa balaheenena labhyaha.)17

Yet, overwhelmed by his

martyrdom Plato sought to organize the world to make it safe for

philosophy and in the attempt rather organized philosophy, even

academized it (recall by contrast Socrates ‘gadflying’ about in the

bazaar?), and made it safe for the world!

30.5. There is enough and more, for the sensitive reader, in Plato’s

reflected lunar radiation of Socrates to discern the supreme

dissolution of Socrates’s Ego, the grand fusion of Socrates with

Truth.

Death is Truth, proclaimed Socrates (Phaedo) -- death of the I.

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Anamnesis, is the Royal road to Gnyaana, so reiterated Socrates:

Recall, Pratiprasava, Nivrtti, Epistrophe, Periagoge: Turning the

psyche around -- psychic aboutface -- The Republic, 518d.

When Socrates passed out into cataleptic Samaadhi for full twenty-

four hours, even as he was standing, right after a military campaign,

Alcibiades fancied Socrates was lost in thought, wrestling with some

intellectual problem or other! And Plato reports it in the Symposium

(220c) -- maybe, endorsing Alcibiades!

Amnesis : Ignorance; Mimesis : Bhaava : Maayaa.

Anamnesis: Knowledge: Being: Sat.

Mimesis, bhaava, whatever its sense ramifications, originates in

duality: I juxtaposed to the other, be it Nature or society.

Phenomena: mime.

Anamnesis: shedding mimesis, casting off the shroud of Ego.

30.6. Socratic philosophy was meant for those who had the fitness

(adhikaara) for it but it was yet not academic. The philosophy of

Socrates was all unwritten -- neither did the Buddha write; no writing

can claim to represent the core of the philosophy. It was never meant

to be written even according to Plato.

30.7. According to John W. Dixon, Jr18

the Spanish philosopher Ortega y

Gasset might have taken issue with Socrates on the claim that ‘the

unexamined life is not worth living’. Manas comments: “Are there

not people who live excellent lives without thinking about them?”

John W. Dixon, Jr, it would appear, contends: Ortega might raise a

different question, ‘what constitutes true examination? The

‘unexamined’ life that is clearly worth living is a life... (that has a

manifest) coherence and wholeness (which are not gifts but

achievements). The person who achieves them, peasant or prince,

does so by decision, by choice, by endurance. He or she may not be

able to put it into words, but such decisions are part of our act of

examination, often surpassing the verbal critique of the professional

philosopher.”

But, what indeed constitutes true examination? Was Socrates a

professional philosopher (was he in the academy or the market

place?) and whoever suggested that Socratic examination is no more

than verbal critique? Where does Socrates proclaim that real

examination is not possible without verbalization or that the peasant

or prince is incapable of it? Wasn’t Socratic verbalization but an

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earnest endeavour to expose to the people their own ignorance, to

talk them out of the infernal cave?

A life of peace and harmony, lived without a necessary Awareness of

the Source, although it be utter innocence, profound manolaya, is not

all that invulnerable in the end, as the Source must elude even

innocence; it is after all peace that is circumstantial, not essential.

Only manonaasa or amanaska (no-mind) can dissolve into the

Source, merge with Truth, and needless to say, nothing short of

manonaasa evidences the true act of self-examination.

30.8. The way of Socrates is the way of Truth, intransigent -- regardless of

consequences either for Socrates himself or for Truth even, neither

being vulnerable, least of all for aught else. “The judicious

conformity with the accepted opinions”19

-- or the way of Plato -- is

itself opinion, not the way of Truth, the way of Socrates. The

solicitude to ‘save’ Truth or ‘protect’ it does not proceed from Truth.

Truth that puts on a mask with a view to success has already defeated

itself. The Gnyaani may seem to ‘conform’, his mind may chance to

remain conditioned but he is not his mind even and the ‘conformity’

is no proof of pragmatic prudence.

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31.1. Ignorance is vice, volition ignorance.

31.2. Awareness is Whole (Samaadhi). Egotism eclipses Awareness, tears

it to pieces, distorts it. The Ego is the cockpit of humanity.

31.3. Awareness is Ahimsa, volition violence. The dissolution of the will

(which alone is Total Surrender) is Non-Violence. Only doing

without doership (wei-wu-wei) is being Servant of God.

31.4. Why should one at all have an image of oneself? No image is Real.

Cast away the image, whatever it is, and for want of image the Ego

dies.

31.5. What is maayaa but image -- and one’s own making?

31.6. Why should human consciousness feel being man or woman or --

human? A Gnyaani has no identity -- not even as Gnyaani. Non-

identity is no witness either. ‘Know Thyself.’

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31.7. Freedom from even human identity is the true message of

impersonality (Apaurusheya). Identity is exclusion, fragmentation.

Why serve only man? Why prefer man to moth or moss?

31.8. What is the mind but a maze of identities, all of them utterly false?

When all the identities are wholly unlearnt, the mind, to wit,

personality, perishes, and out of the ashes of personality emerges

Pure Awareness.

32. “The goal of man is Truth. Truth is more than happiness. We have

pretended that Truth is happiness, and happiness Truth, and people

have believed us. ... But happiness (is only seeking personal

gratification) makes you its prisoner as does woe.”20

33.1. Time that is is no enemy of freedom. To be really in the present, to

abandon oneself to it, is -- to be one with time -- to be ‘Timeless’.

From time it is but one step to the ‘Timeless’. Only time that is not --

the past, the future -- is a veritable prison.

If the present is all pain, why resist it? (Who is the pain for?) Only

yield -- and as you are one with the pain is the Painless.

33.2. When the I drops off polarities fuse; sleep and waking, life and death,

no longer sundered apart, are at last one. Awake, you are yet asleep;

alive, you are yet dead. Fate and will are no more. The trans-fusion of

waking, dreaming and sleeping is Turiya; the identity of life and

death Immortality.

34. Realization is the absorption of one’s awareness into Reality; the part

fusing into the Whole, the individual becoming the Universal. But the

transformation must occur intrinsically in each individual.

Realization is the Eternal/Universal, as they call it, but realizing It is

indeed individual.

35. In likening Buddha and Christ to an ocean and Svaami Ramakrishna

to a river, Frithjof Schuon21

makes the very grave mistake of judging

them purely by the dimensions of their impact. Among themselves

truly holy men would see no such difference. The observer’s criteria

are foreign to holiness.

36. Michael Polanyi’s philosophy of tacit knowing, profound in

discrediting scientism and positivism, wouldn’t yet muster awareness

enough to pass beyond phenomenal perception. The knowing is

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traced to the person and the knowledge as such must be personal; but

the personal knowledge has yet no knowledge of the person. (Do you

tacitly know that the knowledge is personal? Is the person tacit? The

moment the person intrudes the tacit is arrested -- personal

knowledge begins where tacit knowing ends.) Unlike Socrates (Know

Thyself) Polanyi must stop short of the Source of knowledge. While

he refutes the scientific claim of impersonal objectivity he is still

blind to True Awareness, which springs from Total Impersonality.

37. BEYOND MEANING

Asamveda discounts all reaction including intellection, yet ironically many an

intellectual reaction to its exposition has been that it isn’t intellectual enough.

To expect a systematic treatise on Being is to look for the intellectual

satisfaction of an intellectual want. But what is offered is precisely an

apparent jumble of musings, scattered and disconnected, which doesn’t offer

an intellectual or conceptual comprehension of Being or Knowing. Had it been

a well-organized, systematic and academic treatise, maybe, it should

command an intellectual appeal. But an intellectual understanding of Gnyaana

is only a species of agnyaana.

Nevertheless, curiously enough, many of the works of Sankara (including the

bhaashyas) and of his successors (the logic-chopping Naishkarmya Siddhi or

Panchadasi for example) cater only for this intellectual pursuit. That can’t be

said, for instance, of the great Upanishads, Ashtaavakra or Avadhoota Geetaa,

Ramana’s own teaching or to a lesser extent of the Bhagavad Geetaa. The

intellectual works on Gnyaanaa have built it into a neat structure and system

sustaining a veritable hierarchy of concepts and categories. A lot of dialectical

finesse has gone into it indeed and doubtless it abundantly satisfies the

intellectual itch to conceive Gnyaana, which is but agnyaana again. (A concept

of God is no God!)

The diverse musings don’t offer a cogent discussion; in fact there hardly

seems to be any logical connexion among them at all and they don’t seem to

hang together even. Yet, they all say one and the same thing (Ekam Sat),

though in many different ways and together they amount to what may be no

more than an ingeminated tautology. But if the intellectual, instead of

despising them or being outraged by them, should pause to contemplate the

single undercurrent lurking behind them all, it is open to him to sense a tangle

of kaleidoscopic multiplicity breathing essential Unity.

The musings, it may be conceded, might not have been so scattered and that

they might have retained a reasonable sequence. If the sequence is so

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important and the ‘disorder’ has been overdone, it may be urged that the work

is essentially zettelistic and even so it isn’t beyond rectification. But why

shouldn’t the reader look upon each one of them as discrete and autonomous

and contemplate the point posed in itself? Each one of them calls upon the

intellect to examine itself and this intellectual self-examination -- which must

lead to its self-extinction -- is demanded by each musing in a distinct way.

Even the comments on the Mills and Milton (see below items 152-154), which

seem extraneous to the question of Being, aren’t that irrelevant; they expose

one variety of intellectual Egotism; and the intellect itself is a species of

Egotism.

There is no disrespect at all for Bhagavaan Ramana -- either open or implied;

and the ‘steepness’ of Ramana’s path (p.2) only alludes to the plaints of some

of his own devotees. But it isn’t a question of respect or disrespect for him.

‘Laghu Gnyaana’ points to one style of Realization without denying the

possibility of it by sundry yogas, let alone aatma vichaara or Gnyaana yoga.

Yet the burden of ‘Laghu Gnyaana’ is that reactions are self-evident; and by

contemplation intensely realizing as much when one emerges on to perfect and

immutable non-reaction (which is the same as non-identity), the quest of ‘who

am I?’ becomes superfluous. It isn’t exactly what Ramana Maharshi or

another Gnyaani says but whether what is said can be put to the test. The quest

of ‘who am I?’ ends in non-reaction and similarly non-reaction leaves no ‘I’ to

query and so no ‘I’ to query about. Thus the end itself is the means, and

Gnyaana is laghu in either sense.

The essential message of Krishna to Arjuna is non-reaction, which is the

source of Egoless Action or nishkaama karma. (It is not that the mind reacts;

reaction is the mind -- and nishkaama is Egolessness. Krishna’s ‘philandering’

is Ego-less but Yudhishthira’s one falsehood isn’t.22

Even the thaumaturgic

siddhis don’t harm or hinder you if Egoless.) J. Krishnamurti seems to

confound instantaneous or instinctive reaction (such as, say, instantly taking to

one’s heels on sighting a snake) with Egoless Action. But it is only the

reaction of a blind Ego, as it were; so too is acting beside oneself in the heat of

blind passion.

The Geetaa has been cited in ‘Laghu Gnyaana’ not by way of argument, only

by way of illustration. If the Geetaa hasn’t said as much it must amount to a

failure on its part; and in a real sense it is immaterial what the Geetaa says.

There is no pramaana for a Gnyaani -- including the Vedas. The Upanishads

are so great as to abdicate themselves: Naayamaatmaa pravachanena

labhyaha.23

And the Geetaa too has much reiterated it.24

20

On the question of vaasanas the received tradition has pronounced enough and

more. It would appear that one needs vaasanas to seek Gnyaana but needs

Gnyaana to offset vaasanas: to wit, vaasanas alone conceive -- so they can also

‘contraceive’ -- vaasanas, a circle looming vicious enough owing to the

labyrinth of dialectical metaphysicking. A vast array of saadhanas, correlated

with the gunas (brought forward in this birth by the vaasanas), have been

proliferated to force one towards gunaateeta. But the Ego is the root of all

traits and tendencies and if the so-called Gnyaana is sought, the so-called

seeking should suffice, the vestiges of gunas and vaasanas notwithstanding. In

the very process of seeking the end reverses itself into the means and one

glides on to perfect non-reaction and non-identity. [What are identities but

images? -- see item (31.4 - 31.8).]

This is all that can be said of what is called Gnyaana; when it becomes both

total and immutable that’s all to it (linguistically) for Gnyaana as Sahaja. If the

Gnyaani too seems to react (item 21) it is because the Gnyaani exists here as if

he too had an ego; and with no reaction his Awareness is but ‘witness’ to the

phantom figment of this miniscule ‘i’ (anaham-manas) as well.

It must be clear that a desire for Gnyaana too is a desire and a reaction -- so an

enslavement and disqualification for Gnyaana, which is nishkaama-nishkaama

(hence Ashtaavakra Geetaa: “This indeed is your bondage that you practice

samaadhi,” and "Completely give up even dhyaana”25

) -- see item 23. But to

realize it so then and there is the dawn of Enlightenment. Contrary to the

received teaching and general belief again, a Gnyaani has no aversion for birth

or rebirth -- and of course no desire for it either. He isn’t anxious to live or to

die and if, being a Gnyaani, he has no rebirth that is another thing altogether.

The great drawback with many of the usual methods (except of course ‘who

am I?’), whether it is sudden or graduated satori or an aggrandized mutation

of the mind, is that they all call for vain Egotistic effort -- often very fierce.

You take stock of your progress in their application and react positively or

negatively to them and to your mastery over them -- which is all a

confirmation only of agnyaana. If the means weren’t Egotistic one were

already at the threshold of the End -- one wouldn’t then be reacting to the

means; to wit, non-reaction is both the Means and the End. To labour for

Enlightenment is but aggravated Ignorance, but to realize it as such is to turn

Ignorance against itself, as it were. How appropriately has Shirdi Sai Baba

said, in another context, “The Guru’s instruction is simply a piece of

ignorance used to remove the disciple’s ignorance, just as we use a thorn to

remove another thorn from the foot.”

21

38. REVOLUTIONS, TRADITION, AND KNOWING

The Chairman of Krishnamurti Centre, Madras, in an article published in the

Swarajya Annual (January 1973) has discussed two of the many interviews26

of some ‘traditionalists’ with the ‘revolutionary’, J. Krishnamurti. The article

seems to argue that these interviews have demonstrated the superiority of the

‘revolutionary’ over the ‘traditional’ approach. From the conspicuous

anonymity of the interviewers one can’t however conclude that they weren’t

learned pandits and professors or, at best, ecclesiastical leaders, who, for all

we know, may have none of the authentic permanent ‘Experience’ that

Vedaanta, for instance, points to. If the ‘revolutionary’ really wanted to

challenge ‘tradition’ he should have confronted a Being like Ramana or

Ramakrshna. The discussions, therefore, one is afraid, may have been

(considering the verbalism demanded of the present critique) no more than an

exercise in logomachy on both sides, even intemperate, with possibly a new

mystique added from the revolutionary end.

It may be made very clear at the outset that the present writer doesn’t propose

to canvass the traditional or condemn the revolutionary approach. All that he

seeks to submit is that Knowing can’t be the bone of contention between any

‘tradition’ and ‘revolution’, and that these interviews must satisfy, first and

last, the fundamental criterion of fairness, if one can judge it from the

Chairman’s version.

In so far as the traditionalists have been able to articulate Knowing, Being or

Bliss, as it has been variously called, the one thing that they have tenaciously

insisted upon is that it is Nirguna. Several appellations, however, like

Aananda, Moksha, Mukti, Nirvaana and Kaivalya, have been frequently

employed only to convey it in indirect terms at least, particularly in

juxtaposition to diurnal human experience, to help the common run of men to

have some notional semblance of that Awareness. All thought and expression

or communication (Krishnamurti’s not excepted) always entails the temporal

frame and so what is called the Eternal too can only be conveyed, if at all, by

very indirect suggestions and statements that may by no means be literally or

dogmatically understood or dialectically debated. Even a Sahaja Gnyaani

would need exceptional poetic imagination to create a profound imagery that

may but verbally suggest the Ineffable ‘Experience’ to the reader.

Now, any argument (such as the Chairman’s) that Sahaja is Freedom even

with a capital F or that it is ‘final’, ‘a point’, or ‘state of no return’, or that ‘the

something supposed to be Timeless’ must be thought of as a ‘fixed point’ or a

‘fixed status’ (entire emphasis here added) misses the basic point about

Nirguna. If the putative traditionalists who have interviewed Krishnamurti

22

have employed such terms they can be no more than scholastic theologians

and philosophers, since such terms mean nothing to the Sahaja Gnyaani. But

when the Chairman adds that many people have “moments of perception of a

timeless state” and “thought craves to perpetuate that state, it becomes a

concept towards which effort is directed and the quality of that perception is

quite lost”, one can’t help suspecting that, since surely he wouldn’t have

picked up his ideas from charlatans, he must be describing the sorry plight of

so-called seekers who are frustrated in their pursuit. To them ‘Knowing’ may

be no more than a perception that has to become a conception when their

thought craves to perpetuate it. But the aspirations and endeavours of these

minds, however earnest, can’t provide the criteria of True Knowing. (To judge

Knowing by such standards would be like judging Krishnamurti by the

Chairman of his Centre.) It is these minds that fear death -- death of the

fleeting glimpses of awareness they may have off and on. But the Knowing

One or Gnyaani doesn’t have to confront the death of this alleged awareness

or of anything. There is no life for the Gnyaani, so no death, much less any

separation or distinction between them or a craving for one and an aversion for

the other. (He has no desire for even Tyaaga, Moksha or Gnyaana; such terms

are but linguistic refractions of ‘Reality’ -- even Gnyaana is but a name.)

Again, there is no step for him, first or last, and he doesn’t have to “die to the

thing that is true”, for he is the Truth -- which is Nirguna. The Gnyaani being

totally Egoless and as such mindless has no doubts, no experience of time, no

sequence of a before or an after for him to encounter trouble at any point or to

free himself of it. He has nothing to perceive, so no perception to die to, no

thoughts and so no gaps of no-thoughts, no mind to renew in the gaps, no

innocence to lose or recover.

This Being of Knowing (that is Bliss) is no doubt beyond all dichotomies; as

pure Nirguna it is necessarily beyond thought and language which are always

qualifiers without exception. There can be no tradition or revolution about it

but nevertheless -- there can be method in this madness and to deny it flatly is

as dogmatic as to impose it indiscriminately. To the question as to the need or

scope for any ‘guidance’, ‘method’ or ‘path’ pointing to Nirguna the answer is

an emphatic yes and no -- it depends. (You can lead a horse to the water and

no more; it wouldn’t drink unless it had thirst. Even Socrates claimed to be

only a midwife -- though he seemed a gadfly to others, but what a maieutic

gadfly! -- not a master.) The absence of method, however, is but a manner,

which is method enough; and even to one who may need a method it can be

only ad hoc and initial. Great Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and Sufi sages have

declared unequivocally what has been packed into the cryptic statement: yena

tyajasi tat tyaja (renounce what you renounce by).27

Quite paradoxically

therefore it is in effect renouncing even renunciation (so returning to the

23

Platonic cave too) and thus the Sahaja Gnyaani is, so to speak, both mystic

and mundane at the same time.

Krishnamurti tirelessly extols the ‘unconditioned mind’ -- but it is still a mind

(being unconditioned is just another predicament of the mind -- the Gnyaani --

has no mind to be conditioned or unconditioned) and can’t even remotely

resemble the Infinite Oneness of Total mindless Knowing.

39. BEYOND MOMENT TO MOMENT

All identity or reaction proceeds from duality, a condition in which Truth can

be neither approached nor attained. Duality conditions awareness because of

the insidious sense of belonging that permeates the mind, all its thought and

emotion, perverting it into a mere engine of reaction. Right from birth one

spins around oneself, consciously and unconsciously, a vast array of

concentric identities, disposed inexorably over the root identity of ‘I’ and its

cognate, ‘mine’, which occasion all desire, hope and fear. Unless awareness is

free from every shade of ‘I-ness’ and ‘my-ness’ one inevitably gets entangled

in the intellectual/emotional maze and the ‘quest for Truth’ turns into a quest

of thought or goes astray with a spate of hypnotic self-deceptions. The very

‘quest’ for Truth therefore presupposes an unconditioned Awareness -- which

is true renunciation -- freeing one from all sense of being and belonging (such

as being this or that or belonging to a family or home or having wife, children

or property). To uncondition is not to learn but to unlearn (the negation of

falsity is Truth) and when there is real and complete non-identity, total

unlearning, the so-called quest ends then and there: in the absence of duality

there is no inquiry or pursuit.

Any vichaara or inquiry therefore arises out of duality, but it is no exploration

of a ‘beyond’: there is no beyond to explore. It is only an unrelenting probe

into all the identities and reactions here and now that obfuscate Awareness.

And in the very diagnosis there is the cure as well -- the end of all duality.

Once the root ‘I’-identity stands totally exposed, Awareness bounds back, as it

were, in utter reversal (nivrtti or pratiprasava), snapping the entire tangle of

identities and their compulsive cognitive dissipations. When the last dregs of

‘I-ness’ and ‘my-ness’ drop dead, unlearning reaches its end and the

stupendous iceberg, called mind, stands outright dissolved. Yet, manonaasa

isn’t destruction of the mind (the wrong translation reflects wrong

understanding). One doesn’t destroy the mind: it perishes by itself, withers

away by natural dissolution in the process of vichaara. Awareness liberated

(Amanaska) has no identity whatever, even of being itself (self-consciousness

is no pure consciousness), and is really untouched by experience (Asamveda).

24

So-called experience is but a dualist (memory) complex of desire, hope and

fear and the resultant joy and sorrow.

But Egotism can be most subtly deceptive and as it is sought to be uncovered

it can be sly enough to recede and assume still more elusive forms, even

duping one with an apparent sense of freedom. If one is not lured by the

siddhis (thaumaturgies) to which the Ego may cling for its survival, one may

still get stuck in the so-called mahaabhaavas or grand mimetic moods.

Ramakrshna Paramahamsa preferred such bhaava to Gnyaana lest he lose his

supernal joy or bliss. The many species of yoga and tantra or of zen (with its

dizzy linguistic mystique and the grinding institutional discipline behind all

the alleged immediacy or spontaneity of its manolaya, called satori),28

may,

not infrequently, hypnotize the practitioners into what may be no more than

ersatz emancipation. Such mystic attitudes, which are legion, obtain because

identities are protean and as one is shed another immediately creeps in

unperceived to replace it. So one must launch a probe into the root cause of

identity, the ‘I’, to which Ramana Maharshi’s ‘who am I?’ offers an authentic,

truly heuristic, key. Or, one may keep a vigilant watch on the ‘I’, the fountain-

head of all reactions, and when the fundamental figment of duality is

unmasked to the core, it simply withers away. Or, pre-emptively, simply

ignore the mind OUTRIGHT -- as if to supersede watching or even inquiry.

When the root ‘I’-identity is gone, thought or no thought, should make no

difference; such thought, when it is there, is a mere function (anaham-manas),

like eating or drinking, and doesn’t presuppose or leave behind a structured

identity, a residual ‘I’. Thought must proceed from division; where there is no

division there is no thought, feeling or memory, which is no more than a

fringe phenomenon, a surface wave that doesn’t reflect the span of Awareness

and need not therefore occlude it, frustrate its intrinsic infinity; and thus

unimpacted by the mental modalities, Awareness remains Whole and Free all

the time.

J. Krishnamurti too often talks of the mind renewing itself in the intervals of

no-thought29

and learning afresh always in innocence. But only an awareness

that can lapse into memory or thought -- lapse into duality -- must wait on the

gaps of no-thought and be prompted into meditation again. It is only when

awareness subsists on the occurrence of a putative ‘moment of perception’,

said to be true, and there is a slipping back ‘to the old state’ would thought

seek to perpetuate the ‘moment’. There can then (and only then) be a real risk

of the ‘moment’ being embalmed in memory and, as a prophylactic, one must

‘die to the thing that is true’. This dying, according to Krishnamurti, makes for

an interval, a gap of no-thought, and the mind is renewed in innocence to meet

life.30

But True Awareness is neither a moment nor a perception but the

25

perennial ‘present’ (nothing is initial or final about it, nothing new or old) that

doesn’t have to be perpetuated (see item 40 on Manolaya). There is, again, no

process of continual learning because there is nothing for Awareness to learn,

and indeed, as we have seen, one becomes Aware only by unlearning -- so

there is no more purgation.31

And above all, Awareness has no particular

preoccupation with the earth or human life; and relationship,32

which is always

bilateral -- unlike Love, Communion -- can have no claim to primacy.

Awareness can admit only Nishkaama Karma or Naishkarmya (Wei-wu-Wei),

which brooks no duality.

The problem of meeting life or seeking relationship (with humans) arises by

virtue of human identity -- the fragmented identity of being human. It is

Awareness that is circumscribed by human identity that is sandwiched

between thoughts, still thought-bound and time-bound. Krishnamurti asks:

“Can you hear a siren, just hear the sound without any image, naming,

interpretation? Can there be only sound?”33

Now, this is, as one may call it,

pure poetry, poetry that has learnt to transcend shifting imagery, the whole

flux of imagination. It must be pure innocence no doubt, but Pure or Perfect

Awareness is beyond this ‘innocence’ even. A hundred sirens may blare and

yet (your) Awareness, already fully merged into Reality, can be beyond the

sonic boom, hear nothing, see nothing -- so there need not be even sound; or

‘hearing’ and ‘seeing’ it all, Awareness may still not attend to it. Because it

may remain really so unaffected, an experience, old or new, a perception, stale

or fresh, may not be said to have occurred. (The perception and ‘innocence’

are only bhaavas that can yield rich esthetic experience -- there is no art

without bhaava or mimetic mood. Thus inevitably creative imagination is

synthetic imitation -- Truth is inimitable, uncreated, neither synthesized nor

analysed.)

There may be not a trace of selfishness (egoism) in Krishnamurti’s human

concern, but it is yet a reaction stemming from the desire to help men out of

their predicament (as he sees it) and a hope or vision of a different humanity.

He has this desire or hope because of his human identity and the subtlest

(hence deepest) vestiges of Egotism that go with it. And Krishnamurti, on

occasion, may not be wholly free from such counter-vanities as that he has

never touched meat34

or that he might have been a millionaire if only he had

wanted.35

Surely, this is anything but innocence.

Krishnamurti has a communion with the beauties of nature which is indeed

poetic -- and no more. (To see God where a bird or blossom is, not to see Him

where there is none!) Nature seems to be so crucial to inspiring Krishnaji’s

awareness, to setting it in motion. Yet True Awareness doesn’t rest on trees

and brooks, seas and stars. It is not that a bird on the wing, a sweet melody

26

across space or the auburn evening sky, may not occasion a fresh, non-

subjective, perception that can lapse without being arrested in memory or

abstracted in thought. Every perception may therefore be new, innocent, pure,

occurring from moment to moment; and the vacant intervals of non-perception

may be profoundly still, empty, without recall or anticipation. All this need

not be discounted. Nevertheless, total non-identity is no flickering flame,

flashing on and off, no concealed duality in alternation. If one must refract it

verbally at all, one may yet hesitantly describe it as a fulfilled void of utter

serenity, ever empty and still (so it is aptly labelled Eternal), unpre-occupied

with even a moment to moment perception or experience. And to call this

Awareness perception or experience is to confound the mere occasion with the

‘Source’ -- which doesn’t have to be occasioned.

The phantasmagoria of perceptions must withhold Krishnamurti from the

fundamental vacancy (Mahaa Soonya) -- the Source -- which is thus reduced

to subserving the perceptions as but punctuating intervals, incidental to the

business of renewing the mind. Frankly, these vaunted perceptions, which

keep on trespassing upon the ‘intervals’ (where thoughts cease and Awareness

is still) must be no more than the subtlest or purest experience (the sound

alone of the siren) and as such part of the cunning maze of mental appetency.

This merry-go-round of exciting ephemeral empathies chasing fleeting blanks

of non-experience (a vortex of psychic flux -- Is this the unconditioned mind?)

must be far from truly still and peaceful. When it is so clear that the vacant

intervals that alternate with the perceptions must also be impermanent, it is

quite strange, indeed very significant, that only the perceptions have engaged

his presumed attention -- not the vacancies, much less the alternation of

empathies and vacancies. His sensuous empathy is fresh and its freshness is so

continually renewed only because of the recurrent, sandwiched, non-

experience; and yet Krishnamurti has never unlearnt enough to explore this

Infinite Source. If only he didn’t concentrate on the perceptions but bestowed

real attention36

on the vacancies, if he but truly perceived 37

one such vacancy

as well, stayed there utterly abandoning himself, without his moods, moments

or movements, if only he contemplated38

the intriguing process of alternation

of perceptions and intervals, then that honest choiceless attention would

totally merge into the Vacancy -- without any retrieval. (This is true

meditation or contemplation.) One would then realize that there are no more

renewals, that the Vacancy is no passing, instrumental, interval but the

Perennial Plenum (Mahaa Soonya), of which the innocent perceptions are but

surface occasions. (So even innocence is no non-condition.) As long as these

faked-up perceptions loom large the essential impredicability (Nirguna) of

Vacant Awareness (which isn’t even energy and neither dynamic nor static)

would be missed. This Sovereign Purity Krishnamurti consistently tends to

27

overlook and confound it with a “fixed point of thought”,39

as he miscalls it --

because he so conceives it and pandits and sectologists tell him so -- a wholly

erroneous, extraneous view. (One who doesn’t have the Awareness has

perhaps to think of it as a fixed point.) The nagging question, ‘what is this

Awareness?’ is always only intellectual and Awareness never obliges it with

an answer. (Hence the profound ‘I don’t know’ of Buddha.)

Teachers and books can seldom be of any solid help in this profound process

of unlearning because it is essentially one’s probing oneself and, if it must be

authentic, nothing extraneous may be pressed in, since nothing can be taken

for granted. Teachers and books are predisposed to pontificate, to regiment

and indoctrinate, and belong, by long ascription, to the realm of ‘I-ness’ and

‘my-ness’ (Your Sankara, your Geetaa, their Christ, their Quraan) If one had

no sense of belonging, no identity of any kind, one wouldn’t be hurt by

Krishnamurti’s criticism of Sankara or the present criticism of Krishnamurti.

Books and teachers can, at best, point to the ‘fringe’ and it is presumptuous of

them to dogmatize Reality, to pipe It out by resonant, magical, formulas or

formidable logical fabrications. Few can deny that Sankara, for instance, is a

veritable system-builder, guilty of heavy-handed intellection in his verbal

wranglings like the bhaashyas. And the Bhagavad Geetaa40

can slide into a

pedagogic pronouncement, a taxonomic exercise, computing divinity, pigeon-

holing piety. Of course, all of them possess the virtue of the curate’s egg. It

would seem, however, that Ashtaavakra and Avadhoota Geetaas, like the

genuine Upanishads, are exceptionally simple, profound and unpretentious

pointers to Truth; they take nothing for granted, prescribe no means, suggest

no end. Even the duality of ends and means must end (and that is Nishkaama

Yoga) before Truth can be Realized. Such is the Shaanti or Samaadhi of

Nirguna, or Kaivalya otherwise called Soonya (Void) or Poorna (Plenum) or

Brahman (Brahmano naama satyam41

) -- it is neither form nor formless -- or

however one may label It,42

which are but so many names, all of them pathetic

verbal travesties. The Plenary Void of total non-reaction, non-identity, alone

can yield True Religion -- of PREMA, SEVAA, GNYAANA, of unfragmented Sat-

Chit-Aananda, which entails neither tradition nor revolution.43

40. MANOLAYA

Now, why should a communion lapse, why should it flash and fade, function

from moment to moment, unless it were shallow? What rhyme or reason is

there in insisting that to be present it exist from moment to moment? How

would a communion that didn’t lapse fail to be in the present? And how does

the present, the moment to moment, make for the Timeless? Where is the

question of being in the present at all? To talk of the present, to invoke the

28

moment, is to be already caught -- caught unawares -- in the web of time.

Indeed one moment is no less time than one million...

All communion presupposes division -- duality -- and a communion that has to

subsist from moment to moment must be plagued by a duality that crops up

every moment. And only a fragmented, meretricious, mind would have to

parasite on the tinsel of thought or feeling to shine it up. Without this cussed

division, there can be no desire, no thought, no joy or sorrow, and -- no

communion. Krishnamurti declares that the mind must be in a state of joy, not

sorrow, to qualify for freedom. But it can’t be an unconditioned mind which is

conditioned to taking off only from joy or pleasure.44

The entire ‘moment to moment’ perception and the oft-asseverated discoveries

of Krishnamurti amount to no more than what has traditionally been called

manolaya -- which amounts to no more than the culmination of bhaava... True

Awareness, on the contrary, is a total communion that doesn’t lapse, which

dissolves the mind, the Ego, once for all in the Infinite. Such manonaasa alone

truly unconditions Awareness, releasing it from the whole caboodle of time,

the past, the future -- and the present no less -- and from the elusive, yawning,

psychic, chasm cleaving the conscious and the unconscious as well.

41. “No dynamic pill is ever going to solve our human problems. They

can be solved only by bringing about a radical revolution in the mind

and heart of man. This demands hard, constant work, seeing and

listening and thus being highly sensitive.”45

42.1. J. Krishnamurti isn’t Egoless enough not to be reacting against or

obsessed with the human condition as he sees it. He enjoins his

listeners to observe their minds, but when he so vehemently reacts, if

he really observed his own mind, his reaction and its vehemence

should cease entirely and at once. With unrelenting self-examination

if only he asked himself who was it that was reacting and why, he

should then become totally Egoless.

42.2. What chiefly detracts from Krishnamurti’s awareness is his making a

new identity of it, exchanging one ignorance for another, and his

inability to perceive it as such.

42.3. Krishnamurti argues that the mind must have immense, intense,

energy to be Aware.

Yet energy doesn’t engender Awareness in the least; indeed it must

be outright extinct before Awareness is born. It is the Ego, it is

29

Ignorance (maayaa) that is all energy (shakti). There is no shakti in

Knowing, only Soonya -- which is all Shaanti.

42.4. What Krishnamurti suggests amounts to giving up all faith with a

view to Knowing. But to give up all faith is still to pin faith on

oneself, which is to take oneself for granted. Who am I?

42.5. Gnyaana yoga recommends concentration on the ‘I’. Attention, not

concentration, is the Krishnamurti idiom and condemning the latter

he wants attention to replace it. And yet concentration means only

undivided attention.

43. THE PLACE OF THE GURU

43.1 “What is the need of a guru? ... Can anyone teach you that

extraordinary state of mind? They may be able to describe it to you,

awaken your interest, your desire to possess it, experience it... but

they cannot give it to you. You have to walk by yourself, you have to

take the journey alone, and on that journey you have to be your own

teacher and pupil.”46

43.2. “As one enquires for whom is this Realization, one’s individuality

goes, and the delusion that the Self has yet to be realized leaves him.

This alone is the Grace of the Guru. The Guru can only dispel the

delusion that the Self has not yet been realized, but to grant Self-

Realization is impossible not only for the Guru but even for God.”47

43.3. How can one describe the Truth to another, much less prescribe the

way? The answer is of course the usual yes and no. Truth is one for

all; It can’t vary from person to person, and yet its accessibility may.

Who Knows the Truth may therefore choose to describe it and point

to the approach. But the description can at best give an image of

Reality -- not Reality itself.

44.1 Q. What is gone wrong with J. Krishnamurti?

A. A patent guru -- no more and no less. His idiom may be different

and he is so overwhelmed by his own methodologism.

Krishnamurti indeed is the veritable methodologist; nobody else is

so obsessed with the how of Awareness. Who doesn’t know that

the Sadguru is within (Aatmaa vai Guruh), that any other guru is

only an accoucheur?

30

44.2 A guru is an authentic spiritual guide, naught else, playing the

midwife, as the great Socrates proclaimed himself. A vicious

tradition has perverted the term, twisted and hyped it, to project the

image of an autocratic superman. Only restoring the true heuristic

import of the term can remedy the distortion, not any tirade against

‘Gurudom’ which brings forth only the counter-Guru.

45. Q. What is choiceless Awareness? How is it choiceless?

A. Awareness of course is choiceless, otherwise it would have to be

unawareness. If choice were there, one could choose only

unawareness - as against Awareness. But really choice or no

choice makes no difference. Awareness is choiceless not because

I don’t or can’t choose. There is no ‘I’ to choose: it is ‘I’-less, so

will-less and choiceless.

46. Q. How can it be held that Knowledge involves no method, no

guidance, no path? Krishnamurti condemns all of them outright.

A. It depends upon what you mean by method or path. Method is

learning but True Awareness is all unlearning. I suppose

Krishnamurti implies that there can’t be prescriptions, that you

can’t apply a means and seek to achieve the end (turning

Awareness into an ideal that is never actual) or between them

leave it to the efflux of time. But in an unstructured sense one

may talk of a manner or mode. The process or course of JK’s

‘awakening’ is his own path.48

47. Q. How can there be a quest for Truth without freedom? The quest

must be authentically one’s own. Don’t you see J.Krishnamurti’s

point that the guru is a symbol of tyranny, the very denial of

freedom?

A. The quest for truth is always one’s own and it must therefore be

always free. Yet the competence for the quest, the capacity for

freedom, must not be overlooked. Ignorance, as the world goes,

is such an insidious handicap. But freedom is not a stern refusal

to listen to the next man, to learn from him; that frankly, is

anything but freedom; it is regimenting oneself. Dattaatreya was

free because he could so freely learn from so many.

Freedom indeed is the one function of a true teacher. A bad or

bogus guru doesn’t disprove the case for a true guru, one who is

31

wholly heuristic. The Sadguru is always one’s intrinsic Self, but

not a few may need extrinsic, heuristic, prompting or guidance.

If anything, Krishnamurti’s remarks, often intemperate, only go

to show that he needs to have a guru himself. One may

reasonably hope that he may then attain Total Awareness

(Pragnyaanaghana/Poorna pragnya), instead of pathetically

clinging on to fleeting ‘thought-intervals’ (manolaya) of partial

Awareness.

Is there, during his thought-intervals, the misery, the pettiness, of

human life that he usually talks about? Can he perceive it during

these thought-intervals or during sleep, dreamless sleep? Is he in

one of those lucid intervals when he talks about it? If only one

such interval were profound and lasting, if only once he

abandoned himself outright to that Source, it would no longer be

just an interval. From manolaya he would then move on to

manonaasa or amanaska.

48.1. Q. …J.Krishnamurti contends that thought creates the ‘I’, thought

creates the thinker, not the other way about.

A. The ‘I’ is thought, so-called Ego is only the ‘I’-thought and the

mind has its origin right there (see item 25). It is not as though

one created or was prior to the other. Thought and the ‘I’ are not

different, the Ego or ‘I’ being only the root thought. To inquire

‘who or what am I?’ is to go back to the Origin or Source, which

results in the dissolution of the Ego, the mind.

48.2. Q. ...Krishnamurti speaks of thought without the thinker...

A. ...The thinker himself is only thought and thought no more than

the thinker. With the dissolution of the thinker, doer, all division

ceases; such is thought without the thinker, deed without the

doer ─ Pure Awareness. Thought without the thinker is only the

functioning of the mind without the ‘I’-sense and it is just like

action without the actor. Such thought or action is but incidental

to the occasion of living; not intrinsic to (nor does it detract

from) the Purity of Awareness; the apparent circumstantiation,

the exterior occasion, conditions only the onlooker.

The question is not whether thought without the thinker or desire

without craving is okay but whether it is an essential element of

Pure Awareness. Why is it not there in deep sleep? Sleep knows

32

no thought, no craving; there is no ‘naming’ or ‘forming’ in true

sleep.

49. Q. According to J. Krishnamurti 49

the proper question to be posed

is not who but what am I ...

A. Who or what, the pronoun makes no difference -- the search is

for the Source.

[It (‘who am I’) means you must concentrate to see where the I-

thought arises.50

]

50. J. Krishnamurti often asks, “can you be that tree, not just see it, but

be it? Can you be the song, not just listen to it, but be the song,

itself?”

Total empathy is no small thing, but is truth no more? Where there is

no ‘I’ where is the question of the ‘I’ being this or that? How can

non-entity be any entity? Only the ‘I’ can become bird, song, tree or

aught else, when the ‘I’ is dead there is only Being, not being this or

that.

51. We learn from Mary Lutyens’s second volume of the life of

J.Krishnamurti that he is, according to himself, specially blessed,

protected, indeed unique. And he claims he has gone beyond the

Vedas and Upanishads.

Now, Krishnaji, please for God’s sake, why not die to the protection,

to being blessed or unique -- and then die even to dying? Then see

honestly whether you have gone beyond the great scriptures, Hindu,

Buddhist, or others.

52. You devise a vast set-up, found a mammoth organization, seeking to

school people in unconditioning. What is it all but striving to

condition them to the alleged unconditioning -- by the back door as it

were? You forge an organization to fight organization and become

the foremost prisoner of that very organization! Yet, thanks to the

mantra of ‘unconditioning’ the simple truth is not seen! You don’t

perceive your own unfreedom, yet castigate others for not being free!

53.1. When you are fast asleep the mind is not unconditioned, the mind is

not. When there is nothing in the mind, the mind is not

unconditioned, the mind is not. When there is utter peace the ‘I’ is

not unconditioned, the ‘I’ is not.

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53.2. The unconditioned mind is the opposite of the conditioned mind --

and conditioned accordingly as the opposite. Awareness as such is

neither conditioned nor unconditioned.

54. Q. If the unconditioned mind is still a mind isn’t the absence of

experience too still an experience?

A. The unconditioned mind and the absence of experience are by no

means alike. Being ‘I’ is having a mind and if the mind is

unconditioned it’s just being ‘I’ without ‘I’ being conditioned

otherwise. The absence of experience, on the contrary, isn’t

unconditioned experience; it is clearly the absence of the ‘I’.

There is no ‘I’ to experience and it is Nirguna for want of it. The

unconditioned ‘I’ thus is not the same as the absent ‘I’. So the

absence of experience can’t be an experience still, but the

unconditioned mind is still a mind.

55. A correspondent finds it very interesting that J.K. could by mere

contemplation bring forth the quantum model that physicist David

Bohm could devise through elaborate mathematics. Yet, is this the

nature and function of contemplation? Should meditation become a

surrogate for mathematics? And how is the model any superior -- or

different -- for being spawned by contemplation? Shouldn’t

contemplation rather probe what are quanta and who conceived them

or what is a model and who devised it? Where are quanta or models

when the person is not?

56. What a pity J.K. can’t die unto himself for good -- to be no more

the conscious person he is! The inexorable witness in him is

condemned to being reborn from moment to moment. He can but

sense the Infinite but can’t merge into it, be lost in It, and so It

must elude him time and again. It becomes a fleeting glimpse, he

has to die to It -- to the Infinite, mind you -- and when he is

thrown back to finitude, It must return to him the next moment -

-- but only to reinforce his ever-bouncing mind -- as though the

Infinite were there only to play a sort of hide and seek with him!

When he gets intimation of the Infinite does it ever occur to him

that he who gets it is but too finite and that is why it is just a flash

in the pan and no more? If only he could cease once for all to be

finite would the so-called dying have to be from moment to

moment? Would he just be like a theatre for the Infinite to

project evanescent trailers? Won’t he go one step beyond his

34

putative ‘process’ that has switched on his flickering

perceptions? J.K.’s first step surely is no last step.

57. Mind-watching is all right only if it is not motivated, only if it begins

with detached observation and ends in detaching the mind -- not

otherwise. In fact, watching the mind without getting disengaged

from the mind and its perceptions has landed Krishnamurti in his

moment to moment jaunts...

J. Krishnamurti’s interest in the business of observing the mind

is only in what is supposed to happen to the mind itself in the

process and what the mind is said to gain from it. The whole

burden of his teaching is what the mind can draw out of silence

and stillness, how the mind can renew itself in the process,

become fresh and attain a fresh perception. When the new

perception is opened up, the stillness is already gone but it has to

invade the mind again and again, so that the mind may keep

renewing itself in the recurring process. Krishnamurti’s entire

attention is thus exclusively concentrated on the mind and what

happens to it and as a result he is simply turned away from the

Silence or the Source that rejuvenates the mind and sustains its

freshness. The Source has thus only an incidental, instrumental,

relevance for him. It never occurs to him to probe how the

Source asserts itself, invading the mind time and again, and why.

It never bothers him that the mind is under the constant necessity

of having to keep renewing itself, while the Source it draws its

renewal from is clearly under no such compulsion. And yet he

cannot see the wood for the trees, the Source for the mind! He

must dismiss the Source, pathetically hang on to the hopping

mind!

58. “I never performed any praanaayaama or japa; I know no mantras. I

had no rules of meditation or contemplation. Even when I came to

hear of such things later, I was never attracted by them. Even now,

my mind refuses to pay attention to them. Saadhana implies an object

to be gained and the means of gaining it. What is there to be gained

which we do not already possess? In meditation, concentration, and

contemplation, what we have to do is only, not to think of anything

but to be still. Then we shall be in our natural state. This natural state

is given many names -- Moksha, Gnyaana, Aatma etc -- and these

give rise to many controversies. There was a time when I used to

remain with my eyes closed. This does not mean that I was practising

35

any Saadhana then. Even now I sometimes remain with my eyes

closed. If people choose to say that I am doing some Saadhana at the

moment, let them say so; it makes no difference to me. People seem

to think that by practising some elaborate Saadhana the Self would

one day descend upon them as something very big and with

tremendous glory and they would then have what is called

Saakshaatkaara.51

The Self is saakshaat all right, but there is no kaara

or krta about it. The word kaara implies one’s doing something. But

the Self is realized not by one’s doing something, but by one’s

refraining from doing anything, by remaining still and being simply

what one really is.”52

59. We live in a world of images, the mind is all bhaava, hence maayaa.

The basic bhaava is aham-bhaava, from which proceed all other

identities, relationships -- other bhaavas. When you, for instance,

expect another person to play to you the friend, philosopher,

physician, in short, a role, it entails a fabric(ation) of relationships:

reciprocities, hopes, misgivings, fulfilments, disappointments. All

this is our own making, indeed literally a make-believe, that perverts

the essential purity of Awareness, which is beyond all bhaava. Can’t

we cleanse the mind of all this fabrication, free it simply of culture

and custom, frustrate bhaava from perverting Being into maayaa? But

the only ‘saadhana’ for Truth is to give up falsity, to shed ignorance,

i.e. to abandon the world of ‘as if ’. And mind you, every one is free

of it in deep sleep. Only waking projects identities, the entire make-

believe of duality, and yet we can’t see through the falsity, the

fantasy, of waking. Can we be really asleep with eyes awake? Indeed

such ‘sleep in waking’ is non-reaction, which is to live in the world,

actively participate in it (no running away from samsaara) without

inner identity, intrinsic involvement. Only the utter intelligence to see

through the fantasy of waking, its fabric of fiction, can take one to

Truth and only honest, unmotivated, watching oneself would yield

that intelligence...

Can you ‘watch’ your mind with total uninvolvement -- verily as

though it were another’s, not your mind -- watch it, untouched by

culture and tradition, without anyway controlling it or reacting to it

(neither gloating over its virtues nor brooding over its vices) or

resolving at all to be different? It is indeed ‘watching’ the mind, with

utter stillness, without motive, without will, without the watching

creeping to impact or influence the watched, much less grabbing or

reneging (whatever) the consequence. And lo and behold! right then,

36

that very moment, your personality crashes, your will is dissolved

and mind snapped -- delinked from the matrix of Awareness

irretrievably. It is no longer ‘your’ mind, the ‘you’ is already dead

and all identity extinct.

Amanaska or manonaasa is the liberation of Awareness from the

mind; it is the delinking of the mind, not suppressing it or stifling it.

The mind continues to function, in a manner of speaking, but without

choice or will any more; like a lucid mirror it reflects perfectly now,

with no volition to deflect or distort, even as ‘your’ heart and lungs

don’t count on your will. This is the phantom mind left over, in the

wake of True Awareness, which is delinked from it yet. True

Awareness, mrtamanas, amanaska or anaham-manas, incidentally, is

not the innocent or unconditioned mind either, though, too often,

grievously mistaken for it, when one gets stuck at that end and fails

to pierce through the veil to merge into the Source, which is free

from moments and movements, receiving perceptions or dying to

them. In Amanaska Being remains untouched by the mind,

conditioned or unconditioned.

60. Unconditioning the mind, even as it may open the gateway of

Awareness, delinking it from the mind, may have no small role in

liberation. But once plenary Awareness is in full swing, it is

immaterial whether the mind is conditioned or not. The Gnyaani’s

total freedom from identity includes freedom from even ‘his’ mind,

which may abide by a culture or tradition. Others may judge him by

‘his’ mind and think him conditioned -- unenlightened. But the

Gnyaani is never his mind, conditioned or unconditioned...

Consciousness or mind is a big bunch of identities, spawned by

culture, all of them utterly false. When the total falsity is realized, the

mind no longer looms large, in fact it becomes a mere shadow, so to

speak, with its shadow play of thoughts. The mental veil is no longer

drawn, it has no impact whatever, on the Plenum of Awareness,

which is asleep to the mental drama -- the passing show of the world

and its ramifications. With the mental lid taken off, the person is

dead, individuality dissolved, and Awareness redeemed at last. The

mind is maayaa -- and mind you maayaa does not survive the mind !

When this Peace of Awareness is attained, the shadow play of the

mind may still go on; like a mirror the mind reflects whatever is

before it, witnessing perception after perception, without choice,

37

without will. But it is still the mind that witnesses and the witnessing

mind is not the Peace of Plenary Awareness, which has nothing to

perceive, nothing to witness. You protest that such Awareness must

be insufferably dull. Are you sure? You must reach that Awareness to

know it -- before you can speak about it. Your remarks now are only

an evaluation by your mind, which has no credentials to judge what

is beyond it. And yet, isn’t it strange that you should court such

‘dullness’ daily in your sleep!

There is no trace of the personal or individual in the Gnyaani who is

pure Peace (which is the grand end of all love and compassion) and

to his Plenary Awareness suffering and service are only the play of

the mind (where is misery or suffering in sleep?) and he has no

identity with his mind or the succour and service it renders.

61. Awareness is whole, but sealed off by the Ego or mind, sitting atop

like a tight, heavy lid. And so, with true Awareness thus repressed,

self-consciousness -- the Ego and its constellation of thoughts and

perceptions -- passes for all being and knowing. When your mind is

delinked, shunted out, then with the lid taken off at last, Plenary

Awareness comes into full sway, deindividuates you, pervades your

entire Being, rendering you an utter impersonality. The mind -- the

old consciousness -- turns very nebulous, is thrown off to the

periphery, where it seems to muster an apparent existence on the

shadow plane of the penumbra of Reality as it were. All the universe

dwells in the beclouded penumbra and even when ‘your’ semblance

of a mind stands delinked, the rest of the world can still perceive little

beyond ‘your’ mind and seldom pierce through it to sense the

glowing Plenum that pervades your Being. The mind and body of the

Gnyaani may be there to write home about, yet the Gnyaani himself

has no identity with them.

62.1. You talk of ‘is’, ‘should be’ and what not, but they are all only of the

mind and when mentation grinds to a stop where are the verbal

subtleties? And where is the observer gone, where his subtle

perceptions?

62.2. When you sleep you don’t -- you can’t -- tell yourself you are

sleeping -- and that is sleep! The rhetoric has to stop at last. In the

end is not the word!

38

62.3. Can you observe your sleep? Sleep is when the observer is not. And

to die to the observer is to Be -- which alone is to Know.

62.4. Sleep forgets the Ego, Gnyaana forgoes it; awake manolaya forgets

the Ego, Gnyaana forgoes it, asleep or awake. From forgetting to

forgoing is atilaghu Gnyaana. Forget (your) self utterly ere (your)

self is forgone. Inquiry, meditation or prayer, self-centered, yields no

Self.

62.5. Is there Awareness at all in deep sleep (sushupti)?, so a visitor

enquires. Mind you, the question doesn’t arise in deep sleep. To be

asleep or awake makes no difference to Awareness... Waking is but a

dream and dream in itself a waking... Sleep is the pause of duality,

when there is nothing to wake to, nothing to dream about... Who

knows sleep Knows...

62.6. Can’t Awareness be Awake and yet asleep to the tumult of the mind?

When waking is thus asleep the functional ripples of the mental

surface leave Awareness untouched.

62.7. Svapna and Jaagrat may be inter-related, yet operate on two different,

mutually sovereign, planes; one can have no pretence to judge the

other, though dreams may be novel recasts of past or sure previsions

of future events. Dream experience is as real in dream as waking

experience in waking; they are equally unreal in Non-identity.

If waking would judge dream would waking be judged by dream?

‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’

Dreaming one thinks oneself awake but awake one does not know

one is yet dreaming! Waking, Thomas Hobbes53

could observe the

absurdity of dreams -- alas, never the absurdity of waking itself -- but

never dream of the absurdities of waking thoughts (ah! Others

could!). He was well satisfied (though yet dreaming unasleep) that

being awake he knew he dreamed not though in dream he thought

himself awake.

If only Hobbes could wake up from waking (Turiyaateeta), would he

have thought being awake (Jaagrat) he dreamed not?

Jag-at : Jaagr-at.

63. Not the mind, but identity with the mind is Ego. Identity is the root

thought, aham-kaara, that makes the ‘I’.

39

64. Q. What is original sin?

A. Ego.

64.1 Q. What is karma / destiny?

A. Maayaa.

65. Q. Isn’t a trace of Ego, of being a humble servant, needed for

adoring the Divine? How else is piety possible?

A. Humility is indispensable as a means to piety (bhakti or prapatti)

but the state of piety itself is fusion with the Divine. Devotion is

Dissolution.

A trace of Ego is a trace of evil. A trace of Ego may be retained

by ‘choice’ but the exercise of such choice is an exercise in

ignorance. Truth is choiceless. Out of the ashes of aham is born

Anaham.

66.1 Q. I am eager to meet you often and discuss many questions. But

then I check myself ... why should I depend on you? Should I not

be independent?

A. So, depending on your Ego is independence, is it? Honestly,

what difference does it make to bondage, whose ignorance you

depend on? Is your Ego, your ignorance, the holier for being

yours? No, please make no mistake about it, so long as there is

the ‘I’ in you, whether it depends on itself or another ‘I’, it is

bondage, it is enslavement. You are not the freer for your self-

dependence. Liberation is not freeing yourself from other Egos

to take to your own Ego. And if the other man has no Ego, to

depend on him is freedom -- not depending on your Ego.

66.2 The deepest thraldom, one’s Ego, of this fundamental enslavement,

so blissfully unaware, we take it for granted, proudly proclaim we are

free, independent. We don’t depend on the next person -- so it is

freedom! We are led by the noose by the Ego -- that is self-

dependence, which is independence!! Such is our alienation from

Truth, from True Nature. So denatured, the Ego takes us over to the

dubious domain of counterfeit freedom. The vicious mask of

personality dictates our thoughts, emotions, dreams, actions. The

mask indeed makes the criminal, murderer, rapist and what not? Is

this freedom, this tyrannical Egodom a value? Civil liberty, however

40

imperative, is yet of and for the mask and can pass muster only so

much as it tempered the self. Only Sattva pointing to SAT is the

authentic path to True freedom which culminates in Anaham, utter

freedom from oneself.

67.1 Q. How is all knowledge reaction? Standing here if I see a snake

over there and say as much is that only expressing a reaction?

A. All this ‘knowledge’ is but dichotomy rooted in the ‘I’ and there

is no ‘I’ without reaction. If there is no ‘I’ here there is no snake

or rope there. Here and now it is all real to you but here and now

and you are no more real. Were you asleep where is the snake?

What a myth is the witness!

67.2 Q. Do you mean to suggest that all that we see is illusion? Do you

deny the existence of things...?

A. Now, this debate is premature and pointless ... and don’t rush to

conclusions as to what is affirmed or denied. Sure, your senses

perceive and you assert that what is perceived -- the object -- is

real. For one moment, leave the so-called object to itself. You

have looked at it far too long and it is time you shifted to the

subject instead, took an honest look at it. What is imperative is

that you turn to who perceives -- the source of perception -- to

yourself. Nobody suggests that the world is illusory; no, it is as

real as you are, no less and no more. Its reality, as you know it, is

in your own mind. Now, what is the reality of the mind? What

are you, the subject that perceives? That needs to be determined

first and foremost. When all your identities and reactions -- all

the falsities, as we have seen -- drop off, what happens to you?

Leave alone the world, how real are you? And if the subject that

perceives is not, when the perceiver is no more, what is the

nature or status of the perceived? Indeed where is perception?

68. Japa arms the self but Prayer disarms it and Silence dissolves it.

69.1. Q. Bondage you say is being mind-bound, so you tell us to ignore

the mind to be free. Now, who is it that ignores the mind?

A. Ignore the mind and see who it is.

69.2. Q. You have ignored the mind, now what have you seen?

41

A. Nothing. When the seer is gone there is none to see. The very

question, who sees (or what is seen) doesn’t arise. The death of

doubt is liberation.

70. Q. When you talk of ‘delinking’, ‘unlearning’ and all that, I seem to

understand it Intellectually, but it only strengthens the intellect.

And frankly, I feel proud that I can comprehend the hidden

meaning, it doesn’t help me at all.

A. All this happens because you take the mind seriously, you are

glued to the mind. Why do you identify yourself with the mind?

You look at everything with the mind. Why not look at the mind

itself first? Are you sure you are the mind? Find out, or ignore

the mind outright and see what happens to it.

71. Q. If I am not the mind or body, what am I then?

A. That’s it, find out.

72. Q. When I look beyond the mind everything becomes quiet and there

is a blank -- Nothing.

A. Don’t you see, when you say there is a blank there is really no

blank. You must be there to say it. Blank itself can say nothing.

And what do you mean by ‘when I look beyond the mind? When

you look beyond, there is none to look, nothing to look at, no

you, no beyond.

People have an image of Awareness, presume that on reading

books and repeating ‘who am I?’ something extraordinary must

happen to them. Liberation is liberation from images, but we

make yet another image of it! We are all prisoners of freedom,

that’s it. Unless you are absolutely honest and look at yourself

(don’t you see a movie with rapt attention?) there is no salvation.

Be earnest, earnestness is necessary -- and sufficient. All means

are futile if you are not earnest.

Self-inquiry demands only honest intelligence. In the absence of

absolute honest understanding all our intelligence is but phoney.

We use our intelligence but to fool ourselves, to pervert our

cognition. The negation of intelligence is dishonesty. The fruit of

folly is the Ego.

42

Only if we give up vanity can intelligence become free, pure.

Don’t think some voice from heaven will answer you if you kept

on asking, ‘who am I?’. It only means you should probe the very

depths of your consciousness, search for the source of all your

doubts and certitudes...

Suppose, we live in a dark cave and have seen nothing beyond it

(don’t you recall your Plato?). Outside the cave there is the vast

open, glorious sunlight, fresh air, lush greenery. None of us can

have the ghost of a notion of it all. Yet, inside the cave one may

perch oneself on a vantage point, sense a faint glimmer of light

or whiff of fresh air, what the other cavemen can’t dream of, and

may pass for a genius. That’s what our scientists are. If you tell

them what is outside the cave, beyond their myopic ken, they

would only take you for a fool and laugh at your ‘hallucinations’.

The trouble with the intellect is its dogmatic certitude that there

is nothing beyond it. Look at the idiocy of trying to judge with

the mind what is beyond it. The mind has no small weakness for

smug self-congratulation and its meanest feats are none too mean

for it not to earn its self-congratulation ...Artists are vain not

from any fault of art. It is simply that mastery of an art, the skill

you command, the talent you display, boosts up your image,

your status, and you turn smug. We are such vain creatures that

even art is in vain, even art can’t elevate us.

73. Q. My mind harbours many a delusion. As I watch it, not always

attentively, there seems to be no end to the rot it can produce.

A. Watching the mind is all very well, but all the active probing

should effectively end in a trice in Mouna, in non-reaction.

Rather than watching, if you could ignore the mind straightaway,

not react to it, ‘you’ get distanced from the mind and eventually

get delinked. Thus non-reaction is in a manner of speaking easier

than probing one’s consciousness. But often enough, non-

reaction may not fructify without prior probing of oneself.

74.1. Q. Are there gods? Isn’t god a mental concept?

A. Yes, gods are concepts just as ‘you’ are. The gods do exist as

you exist. And when ‘you’ are not, gods are no more. When the

‘I’ is dead, mind is delinked, gods and God are not, neither the

43

world nor you, except in the nebulous play of the here and now

of self-conscious living.

74.2. God is dead -- to homo mensura.

Theism: I affirming God.

Atheism: I denying God.

Asamveda: No I to affirm or deny: neither reason nor revelation, nor

even agnyeya, agnosticism.

75. Q. The Awareness you seem to suggest, where the ‘I’ is dead, life is

without will or motive, looks so dry and insentient…

A. Are you sure? It is indeed beyond the intellect, the mind and its

judgements. Be a good sport! Become that and let us see if you

pose the question then, that will be the real test.

76. Q. What is Gnyaana?

A. Non-experience awake; sleep non-experience unawake.

77. “Asamveda points to action by non-reaction, does it not? In the

present world people do not even have the perception that we can

fight injustices and yet be spiritually uplifted. Rather spirituality is

the basis on which we revolt against injustices. Gandhi taught only

that. What is satyaagraha? It is to use soul-force and undergo

enormous suffering, which will be perceived by the mind, and the

mind is cleansed on account of the suffering while attaining the goal,

i.e., the cause.

Whereas in Asamveda the mind is at rest, and you fight the disease

without the mind being disturbed. So egoless action comes as

Krishna advised Arjuna. See the difference. There is a subtle

difference between satyaagraha and Asamveda. In satyaagraha the

Ego is there but functions for a cause, an unselfish cause, undergoes

suffering. In Asamveda there is no Ego at all. So your so-called

suffering has no impact on you.”

78. It is smug to assert that the human mind can go only so far and no

further and that’s enough. If the mind, according to U.G.

Krishnamurti, can go only up to a stage and must keep off, not ken

the beyond, what then is the mind that must stop short of the beyond,

who is it that says so?

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The question, from first to last, is what is Truth, not what is truth for

the human mind. And if the human mind can’t know the Truth, why

hang on to the mind, why be human at all? If the mind is wedded to

falsity why not just leave it? You want a secure guarantee that you

would attain the Truth if you left the mind. Leave it first and see. And

without leaving it don’t please talk of Truth or the prospects of

reaching it. The point is never whether you can attain the Truth but

whether you must retain the false. If a thing is false just give it up

whatever the consequences. And if the consequences too, one after

another, are false give them up no less, whether giving up the false

takes us to Truth or not. But is Truth anything but not being false?

And can the false dog you if you truly gave it up?

79. How are you so certain there is no maayaa? Your very certainty is

maayaa! You may stamp your foot, as Johnson did, to proclaim the

reality of the world, yet the world is very much in space and time. Do

you know what is ‘maa-yaa’? ‘Maa’ is space and ‘yaa’ is time, so

maa-yaa is space-time (yama is its anagram). And what is the mind

(Manas) but space-time? ‘Ma’ is space and here ‘na’ is time. Mana is

Ego (AHAM; do note that the reverse suggests ‘maha’) and its

anagram ‘nama’ represents surrender or humility. Please forget

pandits and panditry to be able to get into the intricate, hidden,

meaning of occult etymology. Vishnu is space and Shiva time but if

you are no prisoner of space-time you would be neither a

Vaishnavaite nor a Shaivaite. In ‘praa-na’, ‘praa’ is Vishnu and ‘na’

is Shiva. ‘Bhaava’ is ‘Brahma’, but ‘bha’ is Vishnu and ‘va’ is Shiva.

Even in Brahma, -- ‘ma’ is duration and ‘brah’ extension. Brahma is

intension (Bhaava-Sankalpa), Vishnu is extension and Shiva

duration. Vishnu and Shiva are the warp and woof and Brahma the

weaving shuttle of maayaa. In the trinity of creation (AUM) each runs

into, merges with, the other and complements it. Light is Vishnu and

sound Shiva but the invisible, silent, Sat transcends all names, forms

and modes. Day is Vishnu, night Shiva but where Truth is the sun

beams not nor the moon shines. Music is Vishnu and dance Shiva.

Bhaava is Brahma, Raaga is Vishnu and Taala Shiva but the dance

and music of Shaanti, Infinite and Eternal, knows no Shiva, Vishnu

or Brahma.

(Dawn is Vishnu and dusk Shiva. Sun is Vishnu, moon Shiva; yet

Dakshinaayana is Shiva and Uttaraayana Vishnu; full moon is

Vishnu; new moon Shiva; Krishna Paksha is Vishnu and Shukla

Paksha Shiva and so on. Vishnu and Shiva symbolize phenomenal

45

polarity; ‘Shiva’ is the transposition of ‘Vish’, to pervade, the root of

‘Vishnu’.)

80.1. So long as aham is there you have good and evil; one can’t be

without the other; they are the polar components of Maayaa. Thus

you find the world as it is, a compound of good and evil, tiny islets of

good in a vast desert of evil. But the good too is Maayaa, only it is

turned towards Truth, and evil towards the false... Being or Truth is

like deep sleep, and when the ‘I’ is not there is neither good nor evil.

80.2. As for the deities, people tend to look upon the diverse aspects of the

universe as representing so many facets of God or Truth. Nature in all

its rich variety would thus represent the infinite range of Godhead

and in seeking to traverse it to capture the elusive supernatural,

human art perforce endeavours to translate it into emotive, plastic,

symbols. Creation is visualised as Brahma, preservation as Vishnu

and samhaara as Siva. They are the different facets of one and the

same Godhead and have been ascribed distinctive names and forms.

One aspect is not superior to another. If you take anything from

Poorna, what is taken and what is left are both still Poorna only. Yet,

depending on your own bhaava you choose to consider one or the

other alone as Poorna. Each man’s bhaava is right for himself. A

Vaishnava thinks Vishnu is all and so does a Shaiva think of Shiva.

Even so, these are but formal, nominal, differences that appear very

real to the respective sects.

“Ekam Sat vipraah bahudaa vadanti,”54

proclaim the Vedas. The

names and forms are just symbolic and evidently the human mind

badly needs such bhaava-based symbols. Islam, which swears by the

formless, is no exception. When our psyche abandons identities,

when it transcends all relations and reactions, these diversities drop

off spontaneously. Then ‘I am That’ (Soham). Until then, the

differences loom large, seem very real, to the mind. It is all the

maayaa of the mind and the mind is only bhaava. Being begins

where bhaava ends -- the end of bhaava is Being. Until then the

sway of bhaava-maaya reigns supreme, holding the mind in its vise-

like grip. The mind is maayaa, where there is no mind there is no

maayaa.

81. The mind is the product of the three gunas; sattva, rajas and tamas,

and it gets one mood or another depending on the guna that prevails

at any moment. The deities even -- none of them are said to be free

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from the three gunas. We are driven to punya and paapa by sattva and

tamas, propelled by rajas. The mind or maayaa is a compound of

sattva, rajas and tamas. If only one could ignore the mind! It is then

cut to size, no longer looms large and finally, the mind is delinked

from ‘you’. The mind then functions without a structural, Egotistic,

base to prop it up.

82.1 I am the mind, I am the body, there is no I beyond them. I don’t have

to search for the I anywhere. The mind and the body are where the I

dwells. Beyond them the nameless Nonidentity.

82.2 There is no special need to meditate. The very pursuit of Truth is

meditation.

83. Q. The point is I want Truth, absolutely and with all my heart. I am

ready to pay any price.

A. Truth is the death of the ‘I’ that wants Truth. The death of the

‘I’ is the price to pay. The moment it is paid Truth is already

there. But few want to pay the price really. Once the soul has

been stirred up, nothing can stop it. Though it has its own ways,

its own pace, its own manner and mode. Be patient, utterly

patient. Living in the world, abiding by its quirks and all the

annoyance it may cause is itself a grand test of that patience. The

world may be crass, even brazen, but Truth is not running away

from it, in fact, that is anything but Truth. The attempt to escape

into Brahman is cowardly. You can’t get at Brahman that way.

Brahman is courage. Samsaara is Nirvaana.

84. Q. Sometimes I have this feeling that I am only playing a game and

life is utterly joyous then. Other times I forget this and get

entangled and react vehemently ...

A. That is because of the different gunas taking hold of you at

different times. Why not watch the play of the gunas and the Ego

that obliges them with a ready arena? That vichaara would revert

the mind to its original plane. Even your feeling of playing a

game is due to doership. If you ignored the mind, there is no

game, none to play or play with -- the easiest way, it would

seem, is to journey from satya to sattva, from sattva to shuddha

sattva and from shuddha sattva to Sat.

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85. Q. Who is a "witness"? What is it to be a witness?

A. One is a witness when one perceives but does not participate.

Consciousness moves but is not moved. So there is perception

without reaction -- or the mirror-mind. In other words, all

identities die except the ‘I’-identity. ‘Mamakaara’ is gone but

‘ahamkaara’ or a trace of it remains. There is nothing ‘mine’

except ‘myself’; hence, the other is a perception without

involvement but the ‘I’ or ‘myself’ is an involvement without

perception. The witness does not witness the ‘I’, is indeed

witless about himself, and the ‘witness’ dies when he gets

selfwit. Truth alone is, nought else. Where is the witness in deep

sleep? In waking, the mind of the Gnyaani, in Shuddhasattva,

plays the witness, but the Gnyaani is de-linked with this mind

even.

86. In your quest for Truth, don’t do anything out of fear; if, for instance,

the quest takes you to hell, go ahead, go to hell -- only be fearless.

87.1. Q. How is fearless action true?

A. Where there is no motive there is no fear. If you are honestly

desireless you would be fearless as well. Detached action is non-

reaction; there is no Ego to falsify it.

87.2. Q. If you do things without fear, there may be dangerous social

consequences; it may lead to self-hypnosis…

A. Don’t you worry about society, self or anything else. Get at

Truth, irrespective of the ‘consequences’. Be honest, have the

courage to attempt it. The very attempt is the understanding. If

you saw the falsity and shed it, there could be no hypnosis to

pre-empt the self. ... If you were really honest you won’t be

speculating like this. ...

87.3. Q. Doesn’t non-reaction make one irresponsible? What would

happen to one’s job, family, dependants? Doesn’t it destroy

yogakshema, happiness, prosperity?

A. Really speaking, does it? Need it? Well then, so what?

Naayamaatmaa balaheenena labhyaha.55

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88. Q. You tell us to watch the mind, you also tell us to ignore the

mind. Aren’t they contradictory?

A. Why should they be incompatible or contradictory? When you

watch the mind without involvement, you are already detached

from it, which is ignoring the mind. If you can ignore the mind

there is no need to watch it, but if you can’t ignore it, you must

watch it and watching it you learn to ignore the mind.

89. Q. According to some, liberation needs enormous effort, but others

insist it is simply effortless...

A. It may need no small effort to perceive, really perceive, identities

and their utter falsity, but once they are truly perceived, they, all

of them, simply drop off automatically. There is no effort

whatever involved in the process. Perception of falsity may

demand effort, not liberation from it.

90. Q. I keep telling my Ego to leave me in peace, still it won’t why?

A. When you tell the Ego to go, when you tell yourself ‘you are

not’, who is the ‘I’ that says so? Don’t you see the Ego lurking

there? If you are not, you won’t, you can’t tell yourself so. When

you are sound asleep do you proclaim you are not? You need

effort to perceive the Ego, the identities and reactions, and if you

could effectively perceive it all, the Ego is already on the way

out, you need no effort to shed it. You don’t have to tell the Ego

to quit, to leave you; no amount of telling it can drive it off. And

out it goes the moment there is no ‘you’ to tell it to quit!

91.1. Q. I have the full faith I will get my liberation…

A. Don’t keep invoking faith, please. Faith moves mountains, yes,

but only if it is so destined. Most faith people go by is cultural

conditioning, often plain wishful thinking... You have faith in the

Geetaa and, maybe, in multiple deities, a Muslim goes by the

Quraan and monotheism. Each may have his own faith but

Gnyaana can’t vary from person to person...

91.2. Religion is faith; a Gnyaani has no faith, no prophet...

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92. What you write of the Gnyaani misses the essential point. Your

assertion that he is free of evil thoughts and deeds has little bearing

on True Awareness. It is not that the Gnyaani has a pure mind, he has

no mind, pure or impure, in the sense he has no identity with ‘his’

mind. Good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, in short all

polarities, are of the mind, to wit, on the mental plane. When

Awareness is delinked from the mind or maayaa, all polarity is gone.

Awareness or Being is neither noble nor ignoble, it has neither virtue

nor vice. That is being Quality-less -- Nirguna or Kaivalya.

93.1 On the ultimate journey of Awareness, one may get no succour and

one must undertake it all by oneself. Liberation or Moksha is total

non-identity (Kaivalya), which is purely the negative process of the

death of all identities. It is to step out of the vast prison of human

culture and tradition that sustains us on a maze of false identities --

caste, creed, sect, race, nationality, age, sex, religion, philosophy and

what not! The outright falsity of culture and custom and the immense

ocean of ignorant learning nourished on them, fragment perception,

distort it and serve only to frustrate True Love or samadrshti, which

is boundless, universal and -- unconditional. Samadrshti is the

explosion of Love that knows no gradation of high and low, no

discrimination between male and female, man and animal -- it is

downright indiscriminate. When the maayaa of culture is burnt out

and its network of rites, rituals, relationships, indeed all the delusion

of bhaava and symbolism, withers away, and the Ego -- the root-

identity has nothing to prop it up, nothing to react to, none to react,

the person is completely dissolved and impersonality throws open the

flood-gates of Poorna Nirvaana, the fusion of boundless PREMA,

SEVAA, GNYAANA.

93.2 Sufi Iskander of Balkh, on his death bed, said to his son:

I taught abstemiousness all my life in the hope that it would

still the covetousness, which destroys man, even if he

covets goodness.

Son: Then what shall I do?

Isk: You shall desire Truth for its own sake, and nothing for

your own sake.

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Son: But how shall I know whether I am desiring something

for myself and not for itself?

Isk: You shall become aware, through daily practice, that

what you imagine to be yourself is concocted from beliefs

put into you by others and is not yourself at all.56

94. There is no good except being it. Talkers get all their ersatz fulfilment

from speech and never, never go to the thing -- the deed. The ‘logos’

seems to afford them all the fulfilment they want and frustrates

action. But the deed is the man. Talkers must keep talking, the

chicken-hearted must keep reassuring themselves by discourses,

resolutions, and proclamations. They seek to know, never to be and

little know that they can never know unless be. The worst part of it is

they fancy they can talk their way to silence!

95. One hopes hereafter you can distinguish between action and reaction,

realize that while reaction is personal and ‘subjective’, action is

actually impersonal and ‘objective’. If you had acted impersonally,

you would have had no personal resentment or conflict. Even now,

one can sense, you hate the concerned persons, though, if you were

detached you would have no emotional entanglement whatever.

It is only because you are caught up in the cobweb of social

relationships, entailing custom and convention, expectations and

fulfillments, attachments and obligations, that you find yourself

personally tossed up in the cross-currents of surcharged emotions,

almost impossible to brush aside… True action is the fruit of real

detachment; the situation dictates the action and ‘you’ act freely

without any personal involvement. In fact, ‘you’ are just an

instrument of action, which is to say, you don’t choose to act, but

action chooses you; you are but the predicate; no, not the subject...

96. Q. What is yagnya? Is it correct to translate it ‘sacrifice’?

A. Yes; yagnya is karma without kartaa -- it is Egoless Action or

Deed without Doer. The Ego has been sacrificed ... sacrifice is

the psychic foundation of service. But it can’t be ritualized!

97. It is a grave error to imagine that being soft and tender, sweet and

sentimental is love and compassion, but being stern and critical and

even seeming punitive, is not. Pitiless criticism can be true

expression of real love and compassion. Often enough, it alone may

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come to mean honest service. It is really service which demands

action on this critical plane that you people need. Otherwise, one

can’t hope to cure the lurking illness in the psyche...

Action may be as firm as it is not rude and it must proceed from

justice, not hatred; it must aim at healing the soul of the person you

act ‘against’. The cause has to be dispassionately pursued with justice

and fairness. The endeavour is impersonal even in the sense that it is

irrelevant who the persons involved are. Otherwise you would be

bound by convention and sentiment and led by custom and usage, by

personal equations, rather than by justice and truth.

98. When the Ego is gone, the mind is no longer split into intellect and

emotion. They fuse into One and the pure saatvik mind reflects the

Sat within. The intellect as well as emotion is essentially rajasik, yet

when the twain meet their fusion becomes saatvik. But when they

remain divided, emotion is no surer guide than the intellect -- it is as

fallible.

99. You don’t have to do anything to hasten your progress. Patience is

imperative in the pilgrimage of the spirit. It is enough if it marched

unhindered. Even the anxiety to get liberation is needless and can be

counter-productive. The ‘I’ seeking to dissolve itself may instead

inflate its own identity. The ‘seeker’ can become too self-centered for

the Self to get the better of him. This is the pathetic irony of not a few

‘saadhakas’. The oft-asserted maxim ‘Summaa Iru’ (Just Be) means

that even seeking liberation is not just Being. When you seek neither

bondage nor freedom you are no more and that is Being. Why not

lead your ordinary life in the ordinary manner, yet with that total

dispassion or detachment which culminates in compassion? That is

the shuddha sattva of the Nirguna Sat within. When you are not, yet

the other feels ‘you are’, he draws on the Sat within you which

becomes ‘your’ compassion.

100. Q. Whatever one’s limitations, one’s constraints, there is tremendous

joy in bhakti …

A. Yes ... even so please understand to be unworldly indeed is true

bhakti. To be lost in God is to be lost to the world. And to totally

dissolve oneself (not to seek to retain a trace of the Ego!) is

Nirvaana.

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Love, even love of God, is ignorance ... it entails duality. True

Love is where the lover and the loved are not -- thus a Gnyaani is

beyond compassion even.

Bhakti and prapatti are no doubt grand, the love of God,

surrender to Him, surely takes one to bliss, but the source of bliss

is God or Truth. Don’t stop with bliss, merge into the Source of

bliss. Bhakti may be a means but let not the means masquerade

as the End. Don’t just love God, don’t just adore Truth. Please

go beyond adoration. Be Truth Itself -- that is Gnyaana ... Even a

Chaitanya could not go beyond his symbolism of Radha-

Krishna... If you truly surrendered to God, the twain merge, the

polarity ends and -- there is neither you nor -- God. Once you

become Truth, there is no loving It -- where then is bhakti or

prapatti? ... Providence is the handmaid of Karma and Karma,

the handiwork of Kartaa. Samsaara may be divine leela but leela

itself is the play of Karma. You are the plaything of God but

there is neither play nor plaything without the original maayaa of

kartaa. When there is no ‘you’ to be acted upon, God is no

longer actor. Poorna or Nirguna absorbs both you and God. ...

It is a glib pronouncement that bhakti is the path for the present

age. It is much less right that love of God or surrender to Him is

the easiest or the highest path. Were it so the world wouldn’t be

such a sorry place. Surrender is no joke ... the moment you

surrendered you would be wholly unworldly... Actually the paths

are not so distinct or exclusive. Honest to God, let each bhakta

examine himself, assess his own bhakti, see how honest,

unmotivated, it is. Barring some of the great saint-devotees, how

many can answer the question without prevarication? If

anything, karma or sevaa, even when it may not be wholly

unmotivated, may be a surer, safer path, offering as it does

profounder prospects of humility. All men must work even as

they eat and when it is inspired by fellow-feeling -- the most

spontaneous love -- work is transformed into service. “He

prayeth best who loveth best all things, great and small.”

(Coleridge) The idiom of Love is service. It is idle delusion to

talk of serving God as such, as though God had any need and we

could supply it; or of loving God when one is purblind to

‘eesaavaasyam idam sarvam’.57

The rich potential of sevaa has

been eloquently demonstrated by men like Gandhi and Tenko-

San. Sevaa calls for no transcendental sanction. Ramakrishna

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Paramahamsa’s occasional remark that one should have the

adhikaara for service makes little sense. One who earnestly

seeks to relieve the suffering of another to the best of his

knowledge and ability need not answer such caveats. But all this

does by no means imply that one should be a professional ‘do-

gooder’… The great snag with bhakti, as it obtains, is that even

great bhaktas may easily slide into induced self-hypnosis, get

stuck in wishful bhaavas, proudly feel they are so near to God,

being so near the ‘church’ and slip into grand Egotistic sublime.

You take to a bhaava, keep nourishing it, and the feedback from

the bhaava gives you all the ‘bliss’ your Ego craves for. No

wonder, votaries of bhakti must uphold the necessity to retain the

Ego or a trace of it! With such self-centered ‘sublime’ one may

smugly turn indifferent to the sufferings of others, though too

often there may be no such indifference, but abundant self-pity,

were suffering visit oneself. The other-orientation of sevaa

therefore must prove more authentic for a fiercely competitive,

selfish, age and sevaa -- devotion to Daridranaaraayana -- should

be a safer bet.

100.1 …The incomparable grandeur of Prema-bhakti or Mahaa prema, the

infinite Love of God! The story goes that the great Kannappa, when

he feared Siva was going blind, spontaneously gouged out both his

eyes and offered them to the Lord, out of sublime, unmotivated Love

of God -- not surrender to God. Sabari offered the fruit to Rama,

which was all she had, and she had to partake of it to make sure it

was ripe and sweet, before offering it to Him. She had sought nothing

of Him. And to what end Aanjaneya would go to serve Rama! Not

for his own salvation. It was boundless Love of the Lord -- not

surrender to Him. Great saints, as in medieval Maharashtra, are lost

in God and lost to the world. Surrender seems glorious to earth-

bound, mundane mortals. Anbe Sivam Anaham.

101. No doubt there is much intensity and grandeur in the great bhaavas

but they must let slip the Soonya of Poorna. Are you sure one doesn’t

take to bhaavas for their glorified preyas? There is no bhaava where

there is no desire. Bhaava at best yields a bastard Brahman.

102. Your query whether intense prayer to a deity can grant you liberation

seems to imply that deities are no part of bhaava or maayaa, which is

not true. The so-called deity can help in a manner of speaking. But

there is no surrogate for searching self-examination. Prayer, be it to

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God or even a deity can turn one more and more saatvik and afford a

plenitude of harmonic virtue. Yet saatvik is no Sat, virtue is no

absence of quality. You plead you want to end your unwisdom and

enquire whether prayer would end it. But first let us know whether it

is wisdom to pray and there is no unwisdom in the motive to pray,

please try to find out what your unwisdom is about and whether the

passion to end it is itself free of it. Isn’t even your search for wisdom

really a search for security? In which case, what are you insecure

about? If you are turbid off and on, what makes you turbid? Please

enquire honestly, intelligently, so that the very inquiry would be true

meditation, prayer to Truth, so to speak.

103. Q. When I read great Gnyaanis like Ramana, Nisargadatta etc., I

can’t help feeling they often contradict themselves...

A. This is the snag when the spoken word is put in writing. Words

spoken carry their live context, the speaker is there as well as the

listener and the words are addressed ad hominem, specifically to

the listener. Each person has his individual need and it must be

individually met. One has to watch the mind but to know how to

watch it, how to handle the process and the problems involved,

one may still need a guide. Thus one man needs a Guru and must

be told so. Another has no such need and the ‘Guru’ may hamper

his evolution. What is told one person is not told another. But

when you read the printed word, the context is not there and you

get the impression that each word is addressed to all.

104. Q. How do you call truth ‘abhaava’? Nagarjuna for example would

insist it is neither bhaava nor abhaava...

A. Yes, it is the end of polarity. All bhaava is polarity and vice

versa. Where polarity ends is abhaava. What is pointed to is

mere absence of bhaava and nothing positive of any kind is

implied. Otherwise abhaava would be only another bhaava -- a

counter-bhaava. Please note how the word ‘abhaava’ is used in

its context and what it means. There is no suggestion that it is the

opposite of bhaava, but only that there is no bhaava, so no mind,

no Ego.

105. Q. How can a Gnyaani, who has indeed undergone manonaasa,

have any thoughts? Is he not free of the mind, in fact, is he not

mindless?

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A. Questions like this, one is afraid, will be raised time and again,

however much one may seek to answer them. It has been

clarified on many occasions that manonaasa is no destruction of

the mind or its elimination. What happens in manonaasa is that

Awareness gets delinked from the mind and as a result the

Gnyaani becomes an impersonality and the mind functions on its

own, without any Egotistic identity to motivate it. Non-identity

delinks the mind, it delinks the body (mind and body are the two

polar ends of the same process; body is the material and mind the

energic end), yet both the mind and the body continue to

function. When it is really perceived that the Gnyaani is with a

body, but is not of it, how is it difficult to comprehend that there

is a mind with the Gnyaani, but he is not of it? The mind is in the

Gnyaani, so to speak, but the Gnyaani is not in the mind. Just as

he has no identity with ‘his’ actions, he has no identity with ‘his’

thoughts either. Non-doership includes actions as well as

thoughts. The Gnyaani is like an actor in a play, the actor really

knows he is not the character, he is only acting it, but he plays

the role all the same. Only, unlike the actor, the Gnyaani has no

intrinsic sense of acting even -- not even that doership! The

Gnyaani’s mind is like anybody’s mind (just as his body is like

anybody’s), only there is no Ego to motivate it. The mind of the

Gnyaani is thus the reflection of the Awareness or Sat within and

as such pure saatvik. Even so it can assume any mode depending

upon the exigencies of context.

Questions like this will keep raising their head when one is

bogged down in a pseudo-quest. They won’t forward true inquiry

even one inch and answers to them can only serve to add to

sterile conceptions of Gnyaana and Gnyaani. The one honest

question is whether one is free of all identity and if there is

whole non-identity, it is simply irrelevant what is a Gnyaani or

how he functions, whether the mind is with or in or of the

Gnyaani, whether Brahman or Aatman is or is not or whether

Truth is Poorna or Soonya.

106. Watching the mind is being witness without any identity with or

reaction to anything witnessed. And when the witness is self-

witnessed, Awareness is delinked from the witnessing mind even.

…Mind-watching is allright only when it is not motivated, only if it

begins with detached observation and ends in detaching the mind --

not otherwise.

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107. Truth is total freedom from bhaava -- from the stand point of bhaava

it is abhaava, whereas untruth or Ignorance is all bhaava. Only

vichaara seeks to pierce through bhaava, to investigate it threadbare...

Enlightenment is abhaava if you look upon it as Enlightenment. It is

abhaava thus for the agnyaani, who conceives it through bhaava as its

opposite. To the Gnyaani himself it is neither bhaava nor abhaava.

The Gnyaani has no ‘I’ to have any feeling of being Enlightened. …

But all this talk serves no useful purpose. Bhaava or abhaava, call it

what you like, just forget it, forget all the categories, not excluding

madhyamika, which has become another categoric identity. If you are

earnest, just look at Ignorance, look through it to shed it once for all

and when Ignorance is gone that is Truth. Why all this talk of

bhaava, maayaa, where it begins or how it ends?

108. Bhakti is entirely bhaava-based, unlike vichaara, which seeks to

probe bhaava, to pierce it and tear asunder aham-bhaava. So bhakti

and Gnyaana can’t be one and the same. Even love of wisdom

(philosophy) is no wisdom (sophia). Neither is vichaara by itself

Gnyaana, only a possible means to it. Bhakti or loving God is not the

same as being God or Truth. Jignyaasa or mumukshutva too is no

better ... Why should God be identified as Krishna or Kali? Identity is

finite, it limits, confines. Non-identity is unlimited, infinite. If you

had no identity and won’t ‘identify’ God or Truth, there is then

neither you nor God. Being begins where bhaava ends. … Please

don’t for a moment think bhaavas should be hounded out. They may

have their place in the evolution of the psyche. But each time a

bhaava begins, try to look at it, still more, look at the aham-bhaava at

the root of it. You don’t have to do anything else. This is sweet

reason, all honest, that dissolves the subject, which has to be grinding

and honing bhaavas all the time. If you could do it, you won’t have to

haunt the precincts of temples and their presumed deities. Neither

would you need a Guru, apart from your inner self. …

109. We all seem to want liberation so badly, only our daily conduct

seems so flatly to negate it and it is a moot point how far we really

seek liberation or deserve to get it. Supposing maayaa caused no

sorrow or suffering and it was all joy and happiness, would we seek

Truth or prize it? Would even the great Buddha have sought it? But

for the bug-bear of rebirth, the sorrow of samsaara, would Sankara

have sponsored it? This is where the prime Upanishads, Ashtaavakra

and Avadhoota Geetaas, Socrates and some of the Sufis, seem to

score over the rest. The Truth they uphold has no palpable motive

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behind it. Ramakrishna openly canvassed bhaava; the mystic

communion was not Truth all right, but it mightily pleased him all the

same. What seems to count is aananda ... be it Aandaal, Meera or

Chaitanya. If we seek Truth it is because aananda is said to go with it.

And if you could somehow pre-empt aananda, why Truth at all?

110 Academics can be very comical and when they profess philosophy

they can even be absurd. You have only to turn to the bulking tomes

on Indian philosophy by the Indian tribe of scribes to see what glib

statements they can make and with what smugness. To them the

Upanishads mark the dim beginnings of Indian philosophy --

primitive, simple, rudimentary; they nebulously articulate fleeting

glimpses of Truth! To these academics the Upanishads are inchoate

intellectual speculations, callow flights of speculative thought! They

can, without batting an eyelid, talk in the same breath of an

Upanishad and Spinoza, Vedaanta and Kant, Buddha and Hegel or

Fichte, Ramana and Bradley or Berkeley and place them all on par!

For, not infrequently, don’t the eastern sages and western thinkers

seem to talk in the same strain? Maybe, they seem to, but do they talk

from the same plane? The comparison, mind you, is not with

Socrates, the true Gnostics, Meister Eckehart or The Cloud of

Unknowing, which would be appropriate, articulating as they do, like

the eastern sages, what is realized beyond the mental plane. Great

souls express or explicate the Truth they have realized, not just

speculate with ideas and concepts. Do Spinoza and Berkeley, Hegel

and Bradley do so? Do they even claim?

111. The western tradition may be too rationalistic, but some westerners of

late, quite disillusioned with it and sporting eastern spiritualism, have

chosen to blame it all on Socrates, Plato and Aristotle! The one

sovereign end of Socratic dialectic is the steady unfolding of

anamnesis. And the role of anamnesis is not to help you to recollect

the algebra and geometry you are supposed to have learnt in your

previous lives! The real message of anamnesis, on the contrary, is the

recall or recovery of Truth, which the psyche has lost in the whirl of

illusion, almost beyond hope. Anamnesis is invoked only to enable

the psyche to retrace its roots and return to the Source, to Truth.

Socratic Reason is thus ‘teleologically’ anamnetic and if Aristotle’s

accent seems to be toward analytical reason, he has taken immense

care to reiterate the efficacy of logic and analysis but only where they

are wholly appropriate. Aristotle’s dispassionate reason, his bemused

scepticism, is too open-ended to take itself for granted, and the

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inexorable self-critical faculty it inspires can’t overlook its own

fallibility. The vibrant pliancy of his intellect can be rigorous and

exact at one place, yet consciously loose, amorphous and imprecise at

another, dismissing rigorous analysis and logic-chopping where it is

uncalled for. Ethics and politics don’t oblige proven mathematical

canons and Truth and God can’t be trapped in a syllogism. And the

purpose of metaphysics is to sensitize human reason to the ultimate,

not test the ultimate by the tenets of analytic reason.

Yet, intellectual fashions in the west, it seems, must change as often

as even sartorial tastes. After the Vedaantic avalanche which

catapulted Vivekananda west personally to purvey Gnyaana abroad,

there was the manifest shift towards yoga, sundry species of which

seemed to mushroom everywhere. But since the mid-century it has

been Zen which must take the cake. The book market has been

flooded with garish tomes on Zen and tea to Zen and fisticuffs and

Zen and what not, feverishly churning the frenzied intellect of

embittered drop-outs, who have to Zen up their motorcycle

maintenance now. It may suit them to aim their expedient Zen-

archery at Socrates or Aristotle, if only because they can’t or won’t

comprehend the sublime philosophy of the hemlock or the

undogmatic, open-minded, liberal, temper of the Stagirite -- except in

the ossified idiom of medieval schoolmen or modern scientism. No

wonder, they can’t be sensitive to the prismatic classical amalgam of

reason, experience, insight and imagination -- intimations of the inner

daimon.

112. THE SCIENCE OF SCIENCE

Scientific knowledge is essentially knowledge of cause and effect; all

knowledge of cause and effect, scientific or otherwise, is power. And to

replicate and mobilize the cause is to engineer the effect, which is technology.

Knowledge that is power is know-how; science can never pose, much less

answer, the real what or why. The know-how, called explanation, is but

factual description, tracing the effect descriptively to the cause. When the

power of the cause is grasped, its effect can be calculated in advance. And

from a configuration of causes a complex of effects may be computed ahead,

i.e. predicted; or from a constellation of effects, by a process of inverse

deduction, a network of causes can be inferred. Scientific knowledge thus is

essentially calculative, mechanical logic, computational at bottom. The

putative ‘flashes’ of so-called scientific ‘intuition’ or ‘imagination’ are but the

quantum leaps of cumulative mechanical logic. One may as well admire the

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computer as it flashes complex calculations in microseconds. And if one

scientist making a quantum leap did not accomplish it another would, maybe,

later.

Reason, positivist, logical, or mathematical (applied or pure), always proceeds

from prior assumptions; it deliberates mechanically, calculates from presumed

data, which are at bottom objectified anthropomorphic subjectivations -- of

homo mensura. The outgoing forays of the intellect gather exterior learning

that can work, in other words learning that is power. Whereas true Intelligence

-- the deep innate and inward non-polar faculty -- is never presumptive,

neither does it deliberate or calculate; unlike the intellect or emotion, fused

Intelligence has no laterality, Yin or Yang, of the brain. The ingrowing drive

of Intelligence spontaneously dives in and divines. Intelligence perverted and

polarized by Egotistic subjectivation turns into the postured intellect, which is

the tumultous din of external reason. Inner Reason does not have to analyse or

learn; imbedded in the very Knowing it needs no syllogism, no cogitation.

(Just as you know your language and speak it without learning the grammar;

you may well learn the grammar of a language and yet be unable to speak it.)

When the blazing fire of Sovereign Intelligence burns out the ‘worm of

unreason’, which is the Ego, outgoes with it the spurious intellect and its

emotional counterpart; and out of the ashes of subjectivity alone can sprout

even social objectivity.

The scientific revolution having computerized the human mind, the

computerized mind has at last fabricated the modern computer, a homuncular

super-mechanical extension of the human mind. As the entire logic involved is

wholly mechanical, it should not be impossible for the machine, by the

aggregate momentum of technological leaps, to overtake and supersede the

mechanical faculty of the human mind. No doubt computers and the like are

made by man but it is compulsive that the computerized mind brings forth

mega-replicas of itself, sophisticated superautomations, and even as the mind

gets well-plugged on to them they shall direct, control and determine the

human psyche. It may be true that what is fed into the computer decides what

the computer does. What the human mind does too depends on its own inputs,

to wit, what the computer feeds the mind will decide the mind’s feedback to

the computer. As the scientific mind is nurtured on cumulative calculation, it

is compulsive indeed that it exponentially augments its external extension and

as the precipitation progresses man may be hoist with his own petard: machina

ex hominis.

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113. THE LONG SPOON

“The real threat to human values now comes from unprecedented social

gigantism and insidious organisation, which are both the result of a total

technology, which seems to have become a complete ideology by itself. As

instruments of production slavery and the servitude of labour are being

replaced now by an increasingly automated technology and, as a corollary, the

new social imperative is that instead of a single leisure class, all men must

have both freedom and leisure. It is a different question whether this freedom

and leisure will also be humane and creative, a question that can’t be handled

by technology, even as classical creativity was not occasioned by slavery.

One unmistakable characteristic of the new freedom and leisure is that they

are neither of them esthetic or moral categories; in fact, they are not two

different objectives but one: it is freedom from production and leisure for

consumption; not productive leisure nor consuming freedom; it is the

servitude of sated senses. By substituting explanation for justification and

divorcing mechanism from teleology, by mistaking the mechanical part for the

ultimate whole and by experimentation replicating with no restraint freaks of

analogues of the part (to invent immoderate artifices out of them that can turn

the whole fatal to mankind), science has radically secularised human thought

and emotion and subverted the philosophic vision of traditional cosmology or

natural law. And in so doing it has reduced itself ad absurdum to the cult of

anthropocentrism or the self-centred collectivism of Man as the frame of

reference of man. It is a paradox of humanism however that it cannot be

anthropocentric. By writing himself large man can never hope to find the

moral sovereignty that he necessarily lacks in himself. The negation of natural

law would only compel the diabolic alternative of inverting the continuum and

running nature on the reverse gear by the counter-process of a bare life with a

biological flourish, whose entelechy is Mephistophelean. If man would not be

moral, he must perforce be technical; it is a literal deus ex machina that must

be his ersatz sovereign now. Technolatry may indeed be the new religion and

custom, with a new magic and mythology (not to speak of technocratic

hieratism) that will threaten to enslave man. The new slavery shall be

universal.”58

Gotten the long spoon at last!

114. HONEST INTELLIGENCE AND NON-IDENTITY

Many questions are often raised about vichaara, its nature and mode, its

efficacy and suitability. Can Inquiry help in realizing the essential falsity of

the Ego; is it not just a sort of intellectual exercise? Maybe, it helps us out of

the ‘I’ and ‘mine’ at the conscious level, but won’t they still be lurking

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tenaciously at the deeper levels? The mind is such a maze of hidden feelings,

sensations, drives, complexes and what not? Won’t some meditation like, say,

Vipassana, help us more effectively?

Before we seek to answer these and other questions, so often posed, let us,

first and foremost, grasp -- and grasp with earnest passion -- what it is to

inquire into the Self. Be sure you take nothing for granted, nothing at all, not

yourself too nor indeed the presumed Self. Leave alone the conscious,

subconscious and the unconscious and a hundred other categories people talk

about. The only thing you seem to know is that ‘you’ are. And what are ‘you’?

Please look at it, for the Truth of it, if there is any, not because you have learnt

from somebody it could give you liberation, freedom from the cycle of

rebirths and all that. Look at yourself without any motivation whatever -- with

a passion for Truth -- and this is terribly important. Since everything around

you and you too are impermanent and whatever happiness you manage to

snatch is but fleeting, you seek permanence both for yourself and for your

happiness and postulate Truth as Permanent, Eternal Happiness. In any case

you will pass away and it gives you great solace that you won’t be, only to

become That. Falsity though must subsume both the transient and the

permanent, which are only conceptual polar complements.

Most inquiry would seem to fail because it is so deeply motivated; probing

your identities or watching your mind, you react to the inquiry itself, to what

you watch and begin to control your mind to change it. You take to inquiry

because you happen to be so frustrated, jealous, angry and depressed, because

your mind is so agitated, in great agony and anguish. (Arjuna’a yoga is

vishaada.) If your pursuits and activities, ideals and endeavours, made you

happy, you may not bother about liberation at all. The real motive of your

alleged inquiry is this happiness, not Truth as such. If Truth made you

unhappy and untruth happy, you may not go any where near Truth or

contemplate inquiry. People around tell you that if you had spiritual freedom

you could get out of your sad predicament and you seek freedom accordingly.

So it honestly becomes freedom for you, not the real freedom from yourself,

as Nisargadatta Maharaj so happily puts it.

If you took to inquiry, on the contrary, to get at Truth, for the sake, not of

yourself but of Truth, because you seek Truth for its own sake you are totally

unmotivated and that is freedom -- freedom from all motivation. You are then,

that very moment, overtaken by utter honest intelligence, which lays bare the

entire ‘I’-- the persona -- the inexorable, opaque, mask of a maze of identity

upon identity, all of them unspeakably false and inextricably built around the

Ego. When you see this with intense intensity, realize it with utter clarity for

what it is, the whole made-up psychic edifice of bhaava comes crashing down,

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to collapse unsolicited -- without your having to do anything about it. And all

the conscious, subconscious and unconscious of the torture chamber called the

mind no longer plagues ‘you’ once ‘you’ are dead and personality is burnt out.

The probe into identities demands utter honest intelligence to really dive to

their very root. Otherwise, it would get bogged down to a wearisome,

Sisyphean, process of bringing up one identity after another without end. One

may shift the accent from the mind to bodily sensations, but if the sensations

pulsate from the deep recesses of the body they are still felt only in the

twilight of consciousness. The body and mind are the polar ends of the

spectrum of consciousness spanned by the panchakosas, from the ultra-violet

to the infra-red of the psycho-physical complex, from the subtle subliminal to

the gross material vectors of the gamut of human sensorium or perception. If

the inquiry is unmotivated -- and this can’t be overemphasized -- and the ‘I’

identity is scooped out, not only the mind, its thoughts and feelings, but the

body and all its sensations get delinked, set aside. The body may have

sensations and the mind thoughts and feelings but they are no longer your

mind and body. Gnyaana is unlearning bhaava, it is purgation -- and the

fulfilment of unlearning is neither theism nor atheism. It is not the absence of

thoughts and feelings or sensations that makes for Gnyaana but only the

realization of the falsity of reaction and identity, which gives the freedom

from them all. The mere absence of identity that is circumstantial, say, from a

handicap or even manolaya, is no Gnyaana. Old age, for instance, may blunt

bodily sensations and brain or nervous disorders can obliterate them; old age

again may enfeeble the mind and its faculties, resulting in a mere passivity.

And in Gnyaana the delinking from the mind and the body comes about not

because the mind and body are impermanent but because the identity with

them has been snapped. They would not be less false were they more

permanent.

When the mind is delinked the true inwardness of the psyche is released from

the vise of the senses, from the mind’s exterior polarized process of the

subjective reaching out to the objective. The inner matrix of Awareness,

(Nivrtti/Pratiprasava/Anamnesis), the impersonal Infinite, thus comes into its

own, untramelled by the exterior mind and its sense-driven polarities. Once

there is detachment from the mind the whole complex of personality recedes

from the matrix of Awareness, which is freed of ‘you’ when it is snapped,

delinked, from the mind. The one detachment is detachment from the mind;

‘you’ become an impersonality, verily Non-entity, as Yoga Vaasishtha, the

Brhanmahopanishad clinches it. Again, please understand ‘your’ phenomenal

body and mind continue to be there, they are very much in the world, though

not of it; they continue to function with their reactions, yet much as in a drama

in a dream and there is no ‘I’ in them except in the very nebulous, ascriptive

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sense on the diurnal plane. When the consuming fire of epistemic intelligence

(Sophia) burns out all reaction, all identity, there is no phenomenal

engagement any longer, no relationship, no doership, no intrinsic experience,

and waking therefore is indeed no different from sushupti or sleep; you are

simply untouched by experience, temporal or supernal (Asamveda /

Sahajamukti / Turiyaateeta). It is Egolessness, unbroken and interminable, not

the sort of feat for the nonce simulated by yogis and taantriks or the exultant

manolaya of the J. Krishnamurti kind of a vacant mind waiting to be tenanted

when ‘something’ or ‘other’ from the right or left enters it every now and then,

causing a lapse into ecstatic, meditative, experience sans the observer and the

observed. (You need the ‘other’ to sweep you into meditation; you are

yourself not the ‘other’, and without ‘that’ the meditation does not take off.

When all identity gets ‘nulled’ and the mind is irreparably delinked ‘you’

can’t be a vehicle or underlain abode of a Maitreya or Maitreyi or aught else

that takes you over to ‘conduit’ any message from a beyond. Non-duality can’t

rest on the meditative crutch of a yonder agency. And how can you fulminate

for freedom when you are yourself yoked to the ‘other’?)

The observer and the observed may merge, leaving a trail of ‘non-dual’

experience. But there is no ‘one’ without two (the ‘other’ as against the ‘I’)

and if the two are dead there is none, to wit, Non-entity, non-experience.

Manolaya is ‘non-dual’ experience, manonaasa Non-experience. Everyone is

lost in infinite Non-experience everyday in sleep, which motivated quest

seems to dismiss without that searching probe which can flood it on to

waking, but plump instead for one or other meretricious meditation. Gnyaana

again is none of J.K.’s recurring renewal of the mind and brain, flowing out in

a cascade of perception upon perception in life, from moment to moment,

uninduced by memory and with no past or future to condition it. The brain

cells may mutate and the brain may expand and new dimensions of perception

and awareness may materialize and a bunch of extraneous high priests of

science, physicists, biologists and psychologists, mouthing the right mystic

lingo, may rush in, seeking to clinch the irrelevancies. Nevertheless, Gnyaana

is none of these or other mutations or dimensions in human consciousness but

the unperceived and unexperienced Source of all of them, which is yet out of

their range. And it entails uncompromising, unyielding, honest intelligence to

tear asunder the unnoticed curtain of human identity, to see through the

essential human drag of the perceptual panorama haunting J.K. When the

Source has absorbed you there is naught else, neither yourself. All the

projected perceptions, new or old, memory-borne or memory-free, are swept

aside, unlearnt. Where pragnya is can bhaava be anywhere around? The

‘intelligence’ yielding perception after perception may be extraordinary, the

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brain even rare and precious, but alas, yet not honest. And intelligence

dishonest is phoney.

Aatma vichaara or the probe into Being is no intellectual inquiry; it is on the

contrary an ‘inquiry’ into the intellect itself, the veracity of its inevitable

polarities, and the entire emotional, subterranean mind, root and branch. It is a

consuming search into the lurking identities, and the only means to it is utter

epistemic honesty that is no conscious or unconscious victim of culture or

tradition, custom or convention, or the norms, values, opinions or prejudices

of one’s own or others. There can be no such probe by poring over scriptures,

books or critical comments, not excluding the present one. Nagarjuna’s

dialectic acrobatics and Sankara’s logic and logomachy, with all their

gymnastic display, can but whip up intellectual pastime for jaded minds, never

take one to or take the place of the unsparing probe into identities -- which

drop off as a result. Meditation, be it Heena -- or Mahaayaana, or sundry

yogas and tantras, Hindu and non-Hindu, or bhajans and chants, that won’t

simply pierce bhaava or identity, can at best turn one saatvik, never into Non-

entity or Sat. And if you probed bhaava, which is the purest meditation, you

would need none of them. All Buddhist and much Hindu meditation is clearly

hedonistic on the sly, motivated from beginning to end to freedom from

sorrow (duhkha), their concern with Truth being quite incidental. Meditation

is the Buddhist cup of tea, not inquiry into the ‘I’, into the root of identities

and reactions. Even the attractive, refracted, Buddhism of J.K.’s, taking off as

it does from the human burden of sorrow, can but yield a personate59

freedom

sub specie humanitatis, a freedom for, never the Nirguna, or Kaivalya, Non-

entitative freedom from oneself. Only when the sway of bhaava, the dross of

identity, is unlearnt, ‘purgated’, can there be the freedom of intelligence, the

freedom from oneself.

II

Some people claim to have pursued inquiry for long and are none the better

for it, seem nowhere nearer the Truth despite their valiant effort. The

clarification so far attempted should suffice to meet the sorry plight of these

seekers. Yet, the term ‘inquiry’ itself may be far from appropriate, suggestive

as it is of a process of intellectual deliberation, inherently long drawn out,

calling for much patience and no small striving. The secondary literature on it

would seem to augment that impression, conjuring up an image of vichaara as

an exercise in logic and reasoning, if fortified with a semblance of

detachment. It has thus lent itself to become the butt of scores of bhakti

enthusiasts, who would rather sob and saltate towards Truth, as though

lachrymation were a surer path than ratiocination!

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In the putative quest for Truth, no doubt, there is the role, on the questioning

side of the threshold, of sweet and mellow elemental reason that is

spontaneous and doesn’t tarry to deliberate; it instantly switches on indwelling

essential intelligence, serene and sublime. And the radiant intelligence

(Anaham) doesn’t have to think or feel to Know; it is Knowing that is Being

as such and needs no organum whatever. It doesn’t have to compute or

contend, intuit or imagine or slide into the dubious depths of egocentric

emotions. At the onset of this pure and simple Gnostic Intelligence, without

the ploy of deliberative intellect or tripping emotion, entire root subjectivity is

clean centrifuged out beyond retrieval. The mask is off at last, no longer there

to play the rallying point, the siren voice of cumulating senses.

There is no world, no experience, apart from the mind and the mind, in all its

ramifications, is the spectrum of the ‘I’ and the ‘mine’. Only the veracity of

this Ego has to be tested and all that is needed to do it is unpolluted

intelligence -- no more. Realization is no dialectical feat; it calls for no

tortuous intellection to see through the elaborate pantomime on the mental

screen to reach the pristine, simple, Truth beyond it. For all the transcendental

claims advanced by eager enthusiasts in its behalf Nagarjuna’s dogged

dialectics is but a grinding intellectual exercise -- surely misplaced. Any

intellectual contention, even if it can’t be countered is beside the point. It is

not because every intellectual assertion can be refuted -- as a Nagarjuna has

demonstrated -- and thus nothing can be asserted of Truth that the intellect is

invalid. (Would he mutely abide by a hypothetical assertion that defied all

dialectic?) It is no less invalid even if it is irrefutable. Rational proof is no

evidence of Truth: Non-identity does not depend on whether an asseveration

can be confuted or not. Indeed there can be no quest for Truth until one is able

to steer clear of the intellect, and the entire mental apparatus no less -- not

excluding the grand mystic emotions -- which are all the protean, even cryptic,

forms of only the Ego, the one stumbling block to Nirvaana. And as

Realization is based on no revelation it is tantamount to subverting its

sovereignty to seek to clinch it, as Sankara does, by scriptural sanction and the

twists and turns of verbal hermeneutics.

What one needs therefore is no pugilistic intellect that can moot in or mute out

criticism nor a plangent, hysteric surge fabricating a hypnotic burlesque to

pass for Truth but, on the contrary, the rare serene passion of utterly honest

intelligence that can suffer no self-delusion, take nothing for granted in

unmasking the entire sweep of the ‘I’ and the imaged identities that sustain it.

There is no substitute or surrogate for this catharsis and it can’t be tricked in

by umpteen saadhanas. The honesty of intelligence, it must however be duly

stressed, is by no means the mundane moral but sublime epistemic honesty

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that is integral to the radiant Gnostic Intelligence of Being. The probe into

identities must prove futile for want of this epistemic honesty, which may not

be very evident or conscious. One tends, nearly always, to take oneself for

granted and not many can draw a veritable self-portrait with all the warts. And

so we have holy personages who can’t cast off their blinkers and cross the

confines of their sects, cults or denominations and the dogmas that invariably

go with them. Many an identity is none too evident except to tough,

profoundly alert, intelligence that can scoop out the psychic mine of images.

When the Upanishads proclaim: “this Self is not attained by the

pusillanimous,” [see (16), Notes and References] it must be seen that

cowardice and dishonesty go together.

Culture passes for nature and nature for sovereign Truth; anything beyond the

surface is so seldom perceived. Custom and convention have so occluded our

vision with heavy, if expedient, blinkers. And nature to us is no more than

rude instincts and impulses -- ur-nature -- of brute dispensation. Most

morality, it can’t be gainsaid, is a smug swing suspended between unevolved

nature and unregenerate culture. From such unevolved nature and

unexamined, unfazed, culture we derive the prized canons of vaunted

morality. It needs no small epistemic honesty, cognitive courage, to rise above

the pugnacious push and pull of such a nature and culture. The common run of

humans, creatures of circumstance, can hardly muster either the clarity or the

courage to ignore or defy received norms and values and the cup of hemlock is

ever set to meet a Socrates sticking his neck out. Plato thought the world

should be rendered safe for philosophy but in the end it is poor philosophy that

has been thoroughly tamed and turned safe for the world. (Saints in India have

been venerated from a safe distance, though many of them did not have to

return to the Cave -- never having left it!) Yet, need the trite imperatives of

mundane living or even the fatal risk to illumine it stifle or negate one’s search

for Truth, its realization or propagation? One rare example of Nirvaana in

Samsaara is Socrates himself, who did not have to jettison his family or city in

the name of Truth; that the city however guillotined him is, for Truth no less

for Socrates, neither here nor there. The Apology of Socrates is no defence of

himself, of Socrates the person: unambiguously it is a vindication of Truth; on

the surface it may look like Socrates was defending himself but really he is

vindicating Truth alone. A thousand pities that much classical scholarship

can’t sense it.

Nothing external is such a real threat to honest intelligence as recoiling self-

hypnosis -- and nothing aggrandizes self-hypnosis perhaps as occult

thaumaturgy. Too often what passes for Self-inquiry is no more than a self-

assured study of intellectual discourses, buttressed perhaps by some

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intellectual self-analysis of one’s mental outfit, waiting on cumulative

intellection to deliver up the answer. But that surely retards the fruition of

honest intelligence. The process of sensing or seeing all the imaged identities

for what they are to steer past the ‘mine’ and the ‘I’ can never reckon or rest

on time, if only there was the consuming passion for Truth, the invulnerable

epistemic intelligence not to be fooled by one’s own creeping dishonesties. It

is as short and quick as it is deep, and the moment it sets in nivrtti takes a

quantum leap to Sat. Time is a poor surrogate for the passion for Truth.

Instances are not wanting when in the course of ‘inquiry’ (to return to the

infamous word) one keeps taking stock of one’s progress towards Truth, not

realizing for a moment the shocking dishonesty of it! The moment one has to

compute one’s presumed progress, can there be any doubt one wants only

freedom for, not from, oneself? The test of Truth is that you don’t have to test

it when it got you -- you won’t be there to test it. It is not as though one

progressed towards Truth day by day, inch by inch. One piercing look by

tearing Gnostic Intelligence, one unwithholding dive into surging cognitive

dissolution, and total Non-reaction, Non-identity, bursts in -- the vichaara is

over and no predicate survives the dissolution of the subject and object. The

death of identity (cathartic Thanatos) is the birth of Love: True Love is but

the visage of Non-entity (Kaivalya). Though it can’t be reasoned or

emotioned, experienced or expressed, Truth is yet no unknowable nor nullity.

Truth is Soonya only for being Nirguna, so Poorna. Only honest intelligence

Knows and that Knowing is Being. The competence or capacity to make it to

Truth can progress over a period of time and one had it for sure one fine day,

but until that capacity were there, full-fledged, however nearer you were to the

capacity itself, you would be none the closer to Truth. You may take up the

great ‘Who am ‘I’?’ quest as a daily chore, but until you had the honest

intelligence equal to posing the question it is not posed at all, to wit, you can’t

delude yourself of any progress. And the day you had the veritable honest

intelligence IT had you!

115. Animals communicate without talking. Can they talk without

communicating? How distinctive, man, Lamina! Want to know

Brahman? Go to the texts, there is your job. You must pore over the

Texts and, of course, the bhaashyas, which unlock the Texts for you,

the quest is there, got it? Make no mistake about it, listen and abide,

no textitch, no Truth. Nayamaatmaa pravachanena …, Truth is not

attained by poring over the Texts? A clever ruse to put off the

unwary! Why then did the Texts come to be? One guy went on

arraigning gurus, for half a century and more; I am no teacher, he

ranted to no end, yet went on trumpeting his ‘non-teaching’

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biblioclasm, and, by God, publishing every syllable he mouthed for

fifty-odd years. But the end caught him pants down with his naked

plea: preserve my teaching exactly as I gave it! Well, that is another

story. The Upanishad is different, beyond reproach. The Upanishad

may dismiss itself, can you and I do it? Dismiss it? Would your guru?

And dismiss himself? Not that he loves Truth less. Every syllable in

the Text is vital, how many syllables there are, how they go to make

the words, how one word is spun and woven into another. It is no

joke, one false step and you are tripped, your philosophy goes awry,

maayaa takes over, Bum becomes Brahman! One preceptor read

through the Texts and proclaimed that Brahman’s eyes -- He had

eyes, no imagery, the Text has to be gulped literally -- were like

simian’s bum, as red as the red-bummed simian’s. And why not?

Kapyaasa, hasn’t the Text declared?60

What else could it mean but

monkey’s nates? Can the Upanishad go wrong? Some simians had

the reddest bums, he had seen them for sure. So Bum became

Brahman, it would seem, well nigh three centuries, until the other

preceptor descended (Peace be on him!) and declaimed: Brahman!

Monkey’s asshole? What hogwash! The drivel had addled his poor

guru’s head until, duly enlightened by him, the guru saw the shocking

blasphemy of it and turned into his sishya. Hasn’t the Lord

unambiguously declared He is the finest of the best? Is monkey the

best, its asshole its finest? Then God could dwell in shit even? So,

Bum is Brahman? God, this is taking things too far! Couldn’t guess

kapi isn’t kapi but kam + pi, signifying Lotus, truly divine, no fake,

no bum–feigned? Could the Upanishad mean it and still be

Upanishad? It contends sarvam khalvidam … Etadaatmyam idam…

All is Brahman? And the other text chimes in, Eesaavaasyam idam

blah blah, God is everywhere? Oh no, not in piss, not in shit, nor

where they come through. God is visishta!

In the beginning the word and in the end too -- Text, textwists; word

is God and Truth ! Silence word. Most noble and profitable

invention, speech, avers Thomas Hobbes!

116. Q. How is the desire for Gnyaana inappropriate? How can one

attain Gnyaana without the desire for it?

A. Any desire arises for want of probing oneself and the desire for

Gnyaana is no exception. All desire ceases naturally once it is

really observed who it is that desires. Any desire can occasion

the query, no less than the desire for Gnyaana. Indeed, a self-

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conscious desire for Gnyaana may fail to inspire the query and

actually promote specious self-hypnotism. Any earthier desire

may then prove far superior.

Desire is reaction and reaction to it only further desire; the

modality of the Ego alone changes -- even in the desire for

Moksha. Mind you, niraasaa can be just another aasaa -- indeed

counter-aasaa; it is then like resolved non-reaction.

117. Q. Non-reaction may be all right as means; how can it be the end

also?

A. Why not? Non-reaction is only the Sthitapragnyata or Asamveda

of Nirguna

118. Q. Isn’t vignyaana superior to Gnyaana?

A. Yes, if tweedledum is superior to tweedledee. The proliferation

of such categories is neither Gnyaana nor vignyaana. It only

goes to prove ‘the characteristic Indian love of categories’ that

Vincent Smith poked fun at in his Early History of India. Pure

Gnyaana or Pragnyaana in its practical aspects has often been

called vignyaana but, seriously speaking, it is a distinction

without a difference. According to Svaami Ramakrishna it

entails sticking to Saguna (why on earth do that?) even after

attaining Nirguna. The Gnyaani’s life, on the mental plane may

seem to be Saguna but he has really no identity with ‘his’ mind.

From Totapuri, Ramakrishna got his notion that non-duality was

a matter of few techniques and rituals, a posture to be attained

that could at best last a few weeks. And in picturing the Gnyaani

as a rude ascetic, incapable of delight, torturing his soul and

shunning humanity, Ramakrishna was smugly mistaken. There

is, again, the comic contention that vignyaana is to transcend

both Gnyaana and agnyaana! Why then stop with that? Why not

transcend vignyaana too and happily slide into infinite regress?

119.1 Q. Aren’t many of the formulations even in this book quite

intellectual?

A. The intellection is only apparent. Asamveda offers no concepts,

no categories, builds no system. Intellection is learning but

asamveda is all unlearning. It may be even said to be counter-

intellectual since such self-examination of the intellect must lead

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to its self-extinction. The intellect is turned inwards, back to its

Source.

119.2 Q. Aren’t some passages about asamveda obscure and others

contradictory?

A. Quite so, and why not? If the habit of looking for mechanical

consistency is shed and the subtleties of varying context

carefully sensed, the obscurities and contradictions would

become unreal.

120. Q. How are One and None one?

A. Why not? Soonya is Poorna and both are Nirguna. All qualities

are finite; the want of quality is Soonya or Kaivalya and the want

of it again is the Infinite or Poorna.

121. Q. Isn’t nishkaama karma an impossible figment?

A. On the contrary; it is to live in the world without being of it; it is

total participation with perfect non-involvement and non-

identity. In short, it is active detachment.

122.1. Q. Are sacred books like the Upanishads a help or hindrance?

A. It depends. If you can listen to the truly sacred, say, to an

upanishad, as it talks to you, realize what actually it points to, if

you can live with it indeed, and authenticate your being then it

must be no mean help. But if you just venerate it, mechanically

memorize it or pedantically analyse it and depend upon the

pretentious mediation of tiresome commentaries, it becomes a

perverse hindrance. But then you make a book of it and the

perversion is really yours; you can’t blame it on the upanishad.

122.2. Truth, no doubt, is the essence of the genuine Upanishads but not a

few of them must often take a pretty long time to articulate it; they

must beat about the bush, skirt round the fringes, only to make the

most cryptic or elliptic pronouncements, when least expected and in

recondite contexts. They virtually seem to meditate in the twilight

zone of riddling mythology, of dense mystic symbolism, oblique and

obscure legend and allusion,61

which hypnotize the unwary and tend

to masquerade as Truth.

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122.3. The symbolism of the Upanishads has obviously a studied purpose. It

is meant to communicate only to those who have the undoubted

fitness/ sanction (adhikaara) for the real message and to put off the

scent or distract all the rest.62

Many an aachaarya has dissipated

himself by tortured textual hermeneutics, pedantic reification of myth

and symbol, missing the hidden message. No wonder they are all

barking up the wrong tree. One is enticed by these unaachaaryas and

their cults only when one has no adhikaara for the message.

122.4. Vedaanta is so-called not because it occurs towards the end of the

Vedas; it occurs towards the end of the Vedas because it is the End of

the Vedas: Vedaanta.

123. Q. How can one progress from form to formless?...

A. Why seek or attain form or the formless or ‘progress’ from one

to the other? Truth or God is as much both form and formless as

neither. It is because you have form firmly in your mind you

postulate its opposite, the form-less. Both form and formless

exist only for the Ego and without it there is neither. God as

formless is as false or true as God as form.

123.2. Q. If name-cum-form (naamaroopa) is maayaa, the nameless,

formless, must be satya….

A. If name and form aren’t real does it follow the nameless or

formless is? The formless is only the counterfoil of form; it too

is just thought, image -- activity of the mind -- no less than form.

And as counter-form the formless is as limited, as false -- a

linguistic subterfuge.

123.3. When a devotee complained to Ramana, “people scoff at me, calling

me a superstitious idolator,” Maharshi told him, “why don’t you

retort by calling them worse idolators? For don’t they wash, dress

embellish, feed and thus worship their body so many times a day? Is

not the body the biggest idol? Then who isn’t an idol worshipper?”63

124. Q. Isn’t the Ego just a conceptual term? …. And aatman a mere

invention as J. Krishnamurti insists? What is the point of all

these terms and categories?

A. Of course, ‘Ego’ is just a term, only the Latin for ‘I’, but very

handy to signify the root ‘I’ -- thought. If terms like ‘I’ and ‘you’

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may be used, why not ‘Ego’? Even ‘Brahman’ and ‘Awareness’

for that matter are but labels occasioned by communication.

Aatman or Self is only another term for Awareness without ‘I’.

Is Awareness concoction?

125 Q. Aren’t norms and values just man’s own invention? Have they

any basis at all?

A. Life indeed is a profound ‘game’ but you can play any game only

if you observed the rules. “We are the makers of manners” of

course. Yet so long as the doer or actor in you is there, you may

change the rules -- only to come under new rules. You may

respect a rule or choose to violate it, but either way every action

has consequences for the actor.

126.1. Q. If Awareness or Knowledge is beyond meaning, isn’t it like the

existential absurd?

A. The absurd is only the reverse of the coin of meaning. The

meaningless as absurd becomes counter-meaning. Both are

reactions and so agnyaana. All meaning is man-made; when you

need meaning and seek to impose it but can’t do so you

experience the absurd, which is only -- the reverse -- what makes

no meaning to you.

126.2. Q. Doesn’t existence precede essence?

A. All these are sterile, scholastic, dichotomies. Neither precedes

the other; only the Ego precedes them both!

127. Q. What I seek is Moksha, but non-reaction makes no sense to me.

A. How can it? Your wanting Moksha is only a reaction. Don’t you

see that ‘I want Moksha’ is a total contradiction? So long as

there is the ‘I’, even to want Moksha, there can be no Moksha.

When you want Moksha you really want your ‘I’ -- the ‘I’ wants

to keep the cake and eat it too. Moksha is when there is no ‘I’ to

want Moksha. Enakku mokshamedu, Mokshattil enakkedu?

Naanil meikkadavul.64

Egotism dupes man in the subtlest ways.

There is the cryptic Egotism of Jadabharata in the Bhaagavata

story. He too wanted Moksha, yet his fondness for a deer is said

to have frustrated his fond hope of Moksha. But fear of

attachment is poor detachment, and the Egotistic itch for Moksha

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itself neither he nor the Bhaagavata would notice! Mumukshutva

is reaction and to realize it so ends it -- the end is Moksha.

128. Q. Ramana Maharshi didn’t find anything contradictory in one’s

wanting Moksha.

A. So what? Please look at the problem direct and judge it yourself.

He implied the contradiction, otherwise he wouldn’t have

insisted on finding out the ‘I’ that wanted it.

129. Q. What is the point in quoting? Isn’t quoting such a servile

practice? Doesn’t it betray want of originality, even trying to

shine in borrowed feathers?

A. Truth has no origin or author. There is no copyright about it and

quoting or not makes no difference. Without a sense of

authorship how is a statement one’s own or another’s? You are

looking at the mere verbalization. Why not listen to what is said

without bothering about who says it? ...Every Gnyaani is original

-- he speaks from the Source.

130. Q. I know I am ignorant but how does it help me to end my

ignorance?

A. You say you are ignorant; why not probe that ignorance? Not

because you want Liberation -- there is no volition in

intelligence; indeed the wanting is the ‘you’ or ignorance. It is

the nature and function of intelligence to Know. Intensely look at

yourself: your identities, relationships, reactions : your entire

behaviour -- external and internal; look at the root of them all --

that is the only tapas or meditation, ekaagrata or concentration,

as you may call it. The fruition of this tapas is the dissolution of

the Ego (manonaasa), which alone is Samaadhi, Shaanti, or --

Mouna. Then there is no more ignorance to know and so the

ignorance and the knowledge as well as the you of either cease

completely. This is Gnyaana that is Nirguna, which again are

appellations.

131. Q. ... It is my misfortune that I find ‘who am I?’ unanswerable...

A. Why should you find it unanswerable? ‘Knowledge’ is indeed

freedom from culture, from all the identities learnt from that vast

prison house -- culture. All, all identities are false and culture

builds them all upon the root identity -- the ‘I’. Culture which

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makes for vyaavahaarika -- is thus part of ignorance or illusion.

When culture is unlearnt, the Liberation lays bare the ‘I’, the

naked ‘I’, and helps to dissolve it.

In looking upon yourself as unfortunate because you find ‘who

am I?’ unanswerable, you are only reacting to your condition,

which may even serve to aggravate it. One is responsible for

one’s ignorance because one always has the freedom for

Knowledge, which is total absence of reaction. Since reaction is

ignorance, reaction to ignorance, as a further reaction, is only

added ignorance. This further reaction is born of the anticipatory

ideal of Knowledge that the Ego has set for itself.

132. Q. ... increasingly I am coming to feel some snag also in the

process of non-reaction. Freedom from identity might leave you

with a negative conclusion, which it has done, for example, in

the case of Sartre. In the “Nausea”, Roquetin, after putting the

same question, ‘who am I?,’ came to the conclusion, ‘I am

nothing’. I suppose the further step of affirmation must spring

from samskaara.

A. Something has gone awry when you write, “Freedom from

identity might leave you with a negative conclusion...” Sartre’s

‘inquiry’ is heavy-handed, single-track, intellectualism. The

ersatz ‘who am I’ he flings has no semblance at all to the

question posed by Socrates or Ramana, which probes Awareness

to the very depths -- to the Source. Secondly, total non-reaction,

which is total non-identity, leaves no ‘you’ much less a

‘conclusion’, negative or positive: there is no ‘I’ to proclaim ‘I

know nothing’. Can ‘nothing’ say, ‘I am nothing’? If not, who or

what is the ‘I’ that says ‘I am nothing’? Look at that Source.

Indeed there is nothing beyond no further step of affirmation:

there is nothing further to affirm or negate, no samskaara to wait

on. Non-reaction is a singular case of upeya being upaaya as

well. The ‘I’ is the first identity and so long as it remains, non-

identity is far from complete. It is this residual ‘I’ that leaves you

with a ‘negative conclusion’.

It is only the Ego that has to ask ‘who am I?’ and when the Ego

perishes the question of identity doesn’t arise at all. ‘Aham

Brahmaasmi’65

again is only an asseveration of the Ego. So

called Brahman doesn’t have to seek or assert any identity. If

real total non-reaction is the ‘upaaya’, it ‘obverses’ itself into the

75

‘upeya’ and no samskaara can delay, defy, frustrate or survive it.

If this sounds negative, that is the handicap of all language and

communication, which can’t opt out of the reactive frame. If you

contend this is ‘nothing’ or ‘nothingness’, once again it is the

Ego that protests, which is only a reaction. When the Ego is gone

there is no problem (for the Ego is the one problem) or solution,

no pursuit or conclusion. This alone is Shaanti -- or Mouna,

which is no ritual practice of verbal silence. The Upanishads

speak only of this Awareness but the Awareness needs no

Upanishads.

133. The best of saadhanas, methods or techniques can at best take you

only to sattva, not to Sat, but shuddhasattva can still point to Sat.

134. Q. What is the right path to Truth -- Gnyaana, Bhakti or Karma?

A. The negation of falsity is Truth, the dissolution of ignorance

Gnosis, thus Truth is the true path to Itself, call It what you like,

Gnyaana, Bhakti, Karma or by any other name you have the

ingenuity to invent. Reality knows no such distinctions, no such

appellations, and so they are all equally unreal.

135. Q. Ramakrshna Paramahamsa has prescribed Bhakti, since,

according to him, nothing is easier than surrendering and

becoming servant...

A. Call it what you like, whatever you do to end falsity must mean

abandoning yourself to Reality, which entails surrender of the

Ego, its dissolution. ...Holiness is Whole -- fusion; the Ego is

identity, which is fission, fragmentation. Nirvaana is the healing

of this fission, this unholiness. Duality proceeds from breach of

Truth, the cracked psyche (chidaabhaasa) with its imperative

imaging mood (bhaavamaayaa) spawning vain experience on its

phoney odyssey. ...Humility is no less an image or mood than

vanity, though as dualities go, humility may be the purer for its

genuflection. ... Ramakrshna insists that for the pure joy of

service66

one retains the daasa bhaava, servant Ego, that you must

taste sugar to enjoy its sweetness. (Without bhaava -- as if --

there is no esthetic sense) But does tasting sweet make you

sweet? Being sweet sugar itself seems to be under no such

compulsion, to have no such itch. Being begins where bhaava

ends.

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136. Q. Why be so critical of Zen?

A. No, certainly not, you are quite mistaken ... Only you shouldn’t

confound Zen with the zen mystique, the zen regimen, zen cult.

The Buddha was a big fool ! He knew no Zen martial art, no Zen

archery. Did he know one koan? How could he be a Zen Master?

Sorry, he would never make it!

137.1. “What is the real message of the Euthyphro?,” a young man reading

it was asked. “Why, of course, it exposes conventional certitude,

received rectitude,” he averred. True enough, but deeper still, reader

dear, don’t you see that the Euthyphro is addressed to the Euthyphro

in you?

137.2. Q. Supposing there is a vicious villain -- how should I deal with

him?

A. Supposing you were that villain -- how would you deal with

yourself?

137.3 Q. -- There is so much conflict and violence amidst humans; there

seems to be no end to human misery and suffering. If God is,

won’t God intervene to save humanity?

A. Everyday millions of ants are savagely warring against millions

of termites. Why won’t God intervene? And why wouldn’t you

ask why God doesn’t? Humans slaughtered millions of bisons in

North America, thousands of elephants, rhinos in Africa and

tigers in India and have desertified vast stretches of dense

evergreen forests. Did God intervene to save them? Who knows

what is happening in all the rest of the infinite universe? Are

humans that privileged to be a special concern of God’s?

138. Q. It is my firm belief that Christianity is the only effective answer to

all our ills. … it is the only religion of love. ...

A. Boundless and Infinite is Love, Compassion, Grace:

unconditional, unmotivated, even unilateral -- indiscriminate.

And the message of Love is indeed Eternal; it had to wait for no

particular prophet or personage to find its Being. It is the true

message of the Upanishads and the Tao Te Ching, of Buddha, of

Jaina Jeevakarunya, of the famed Tamil Anbay Sivam, of

Socrates and of the Sufis no less than Christ. ... And Non-

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identity or True Love is that trans-fusion where there is no other

to be loved. ... How much of your own evangelical service and

charity is honestly unmotivated, born of Pure Love? Do probe

that question please and search your own heart first. Therein lies

the answer to all our ills.

139. Q. I am afraid you seem quite evasive a little too often... It seems

you must answer yes and no to fundamental questions...

A. Sure; why to this question too whether the answer is yes and no

the answer again is yes and no... Non-identity, beyond all

dualities, isn’t yet negative-identity even. Truth is neither

transcendent nor immanent, neither negative nor positive, neither

atheistic nor theistic. Neti Neti Neti.

140.1. Look at the Source of your doubt; that Primeval Awareness is not

form or formless, nature or supernature, being or becoming, maayaa,

soonya or satya. It is neither transcendent nor immanent.67

Hence the

utter futility of all mental faculties -- the intellect, emotion,

imagination and intuition.

140.2. The negation of falsity is Truth, the dissolution of ignorance Gnosis,

to Know is but to unlearn. Being begins where bhaava ends.

140.3. Total non-reaction, non-identity, alone can yield True Religion -- of

Love, Compassion, Grace, of unfragmented Being, Awareness (and

Action) -- which entails neither tradition nor revolution.

140.4. Non-identity, or True Love is that trans-fusion where there is no

other to be loved.

141.1. Wisdom is madness to the worldlywise, madness neither worldly nor

wise.

141.2. Culture and civilization are sandwiched between the savage and the

sage, the savage is anterior, sage posterior to them. History is the

chiming of Eternity sporting time. “Before Abraham was I am.”

141.3. Living is the unfolding of Truth. The state and society, intrinsic to the

good life, are extraneous to True Living.

142. Speaking the Truth and being honest and upright -- the practice of

integrity -- however laudable, may not yet be confounded with the

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consuming search for Truth, for the Whole Source of Awareness and

the resulting dissolution of me and mine -- the mind -- in the Infinite.

That True Living, which is acting without agency, beyond the

dualism of good and evil, right and wrong, must elude the conscious

practice of conditioned integrity. Verily, it is Virtue -- Wisdom --

without volition, which may not always oblige the do’s and don’ts of

moral codes. True Integrity knows no disintegration into duality; it

isn’t just the complacent unity of thought, word and deed; satya or

sattva is no Sat.68

143.1. Not only pleasures, pains too are ephemeral.

143.2. If birth is possible, why not rebirth?

143.3. Joy and sorrow, the stuff of common life, become yoga, union with

God; so does death, marana yoga; life and death but differ in style.

144.1. Man is a sinning animal. Beware! the best and the worst elements

possess you -- be they conscious or unconscious, manifest or latent.

The angelic and the diabolic, the poetic and the pedestrian, sublime

and ridiculous, noble and mean, beautiful and ugly -- they constitute

your very being. You are the sage and the savage, saint and sinner,

sane and lunatic, genius and dunderhead -- Jesus and Judas! Of what

crime, sin or vice are you incapable? The whole course of history is

one’s autobiography.

144.2. Why are you not Buddha? Because verily you are Maara! Why are

you not Socrates? Because you are Anytus and Meletus! And why are

you not Jesus? Because you are indeed Judas! Vice’s name is thyself.

145.1. What is the infinity of learning but the infinity of ignorance? Infinite

is ignorance, so no limit to learning.

145.2. “Empty eyeballs knew

That knowledge increases unreality, that

Mirror on mirror mirrored is all the show.”69

145.3. Art is long, yet no longer than life.

146. The poet manifests a semblance of Nirvaana, the Gnyaani a

semblance of ego. When a Gnyaani turns poetic mimesis operates in

79

the reverse -- as though God imitated man. Gnyaani kanindu kavi

paadugiraan.70

-- True music is the sound of silence.

147. “If it be true that God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, the saint

goes to the centre, the poet and the artist to the ring where everything

comes round again. The poet must not seek for what is still and fixed,

for that has no life for him...but be content to find his pleasure in all

that is for ever passing away that it may come again...in whatever is

most fleeting, most impassioned, as it were for its own perfection,

most eager to return in its glory. Yet perhaps he must endure the

impermanent a little, for these things return, but not wholly, for no

two faces are alike, and, it may be, had we more learned eyes, no two

flowers. Is it that all things are made by the struggle of the individual

and the world of the unchanging and returning, and that the saint and

the poet are over all, and that the poet has made his home in the

serpent’s mouth?”71

148.1. ‘How could a great dramatist be identified with his characters?’, it is

often asked, and the answer is again yes and no. None of his

characters is Shakespeare himself and yet he is all of them at once.

They all seem to step out of the intense expanse of his psyche -- hero,

villain, fool, princes and prelates, courtiers to gravediggers; Othello,

Desdemona and Iago; Ariel, Prospero and Caliban; Puck and Bottom,

Caesar and Cinna, Lear or Lady Macbeth, Portia as well as Shylock,

Hamlet no less than Falstaff. Verily the infinite psyche of

Shakespeare is their original theatre. (Can a Tolstoy fathom the

Virtue of this colossal Knowledge?)

148.2. REALITY, RHETORIC AND MORALITY

No one can deny that higher rhetoric has been an essential part of poetic

apprehension (Plato and Aristotle were not unaware of it) or that it is the more

persuasive for being higher. There is enough of it in Shakespeare, though his

egoless empathy can dissolve any personal bias. “…the truest poetry is the

most feigning…”72

This is the mimesis or empathy (catharsis is only a

variation of it) one finds in Homer or Chaucer, the poetic faculty of which

Keats says: “... it is not itself -- it has no self -- it is everything and nothing --

it has no character... it has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an

Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the cameleon

Poet...he has no identity -- he is continually in for -- and filling some other

Body.” (The narrative mode isn’t too obliging in helping the Ego out.) But

80

with verily a Shakespearean awareness Burke can still be partisan: he is

dealing with the pitiless world of fact, not pliant fancy. Every reader knows

that Burke is canvassing a cause, and reads him for his stupendous and

unfailing Godly vision of man and society, which the heat of passionate

contention articulates. It is some grave crisis in politics or civilization that

calls forth his searching rhetoric and it is nearly always sublimed by the

unyielding divine hold on his grand vision. Burke is a rare example of both

reason and rhetoric modestly but acutely waiting on exalted imagination...

All art, of course, is at bottom philosophic in the sense that it points to the

ultimate metaphysical Source, but art is not therefore the handmaid of

philosophy. In the pursuit of imaginative contemplation the many strands of

awareness hold an endless converse, which can add up to a philosophy when

rationally comprehended. But the imagination doesn’t contemplate to oblige

rational comprehension. As the source of esthetic sensibility the veil or kosa

of aanandamaya enjoys a virtual vantage of haunting -- if fleeting -- images of

the Self or Awareness, which may explain the dim, evanescent, mystic

intimations of poetic imagination -- as though it had attained the Nirguna of

Nirvaana -- and this is the true mimesis of all unmotivated poesy. So poetry

can mimic the Ultimate, as they call It, and Beauty, let us at once grant, is but

Truth mimicked or formed. (The formless isn’t therefore Truth but only

another mode of imitation.) If art thus represents a yonder wavelength, it must

without doubt be morally autonomous, which is to say, it has a morality all its

own, sanctioned, so to speak, by the conscience of the imagination. Excellence

is esthetic and there can be no morality independent of it; this is the

sovereignty of true art and it would be regressive, indeed barbarous, to yoke it

to a subesthetic morality. Charles Williams, sensitizing Mathew Arnold’s

rather myopic perception of poetry as the criticism of life, invokes the poetic

application of ideas to life, which “creates something with a new life of its

own. The application of that life to ours is something profounder than the

deduction of a moral or philosophical idea. It is the entering through the

senses and through the mind of another existence.”73

149.1. Mimesis or empathy is the poetic faculty of allness by which the Ego,

as though egoless in the saguna state, enters into any experience, not

originally its own. Yet mimesis is only the poetic flux of shifting

identity -- ersatz Ego -- never non-identity. Bhaava is never Being.

149.2. What is genius but shining ignorance -- mere tinsel of the Ego? Can

genius attain a semblance of the Knowing-Being or brilliance of

mind yield the True Awareness of a Gnyaani? ...Artistic or

intellectual genius is no more than trivial expertise in the murky cave

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of maayaa, a shallow glow worm whose faint flicker can, among the

purblind cavemen, pass even for numinous luminosity! The vanity of

reason and imagination!

150.1. Literature presupposes freedom and inequality -- freedom to write

and inequality to write about.

150.2. Obscurity is no virtue, yet great literature can be obscure; an anxiety

to be understood seldom produces great literature.

150.3. Great minds have a plenitude of keen, subtle, niceties of

understanding. (Maria Rossetti speaks of the prismatic ambiguity of

Dante). But their multitudinous comprehension and versatile clarity is

often mistaken for obscurity and inconsistency.

150.4. “The old Ionian philosopher, Heraclitus, wrote most obscurely; ancient

Indian sages too are not easy to understand. It is the nature of such

books and themes to be obscure, dark and riddling. From the earliest

times certain kinds of knowledge have remained esoteric because

their pursuit was too arduous to be popular. Most people lack the

patience to understand and the subtlety to follow a great mind.”74

151. Can anything individual be defined? Let any definer define himself

first. If he can’t pack himself up in a definition how dare he assume

anything else can be?

152. James Mill had no doubt (so we learn from John Stuart) that were he

God he would have created a far better world. (So had said King

Alfonso of Castille in a pardonable context and according to an

anecdote; so too Vivekananda as young Naren.)75

Better of course as

he understood it, with which God who isn’t James Mill may disagree.

153. Better be a Socrates dissatisfied than a swine satisfied, asserts John

Stuart Mill -- how obviously satisfied! Better for whom, man or

swine? Sauce for the goose isn’t sauce for the gander. Both Socrates

and swine may choose to confute the smug anthropomorphism of the

‘saint of rationalism’.

154. The Egotism of justifying the ways of God to man!

155. Where does being end and consciousness begin? Pace Marx. Is being

unconscious or conciousness non-being?

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156. Would a psychologist or a sociologist applied his perspectives and

methods to himself! He hardly seems to realize that he is purveying

them only to others. He knows his fellow men as objects but doesn’t

know himself so. And in not knowing himself he doesn’t know even

one subject. What a sight to see one of them in tension or frustration!

A student of stress or strain in others, he can’t observe himself in that

condition!

157. Q. ...Is there no way out of the conflicts and chaos in human life?

How can the spirit triumph over matter?...

A. ...Matter and spirit and the chasm or conflict between them are

all only in the mind. Why adore the spirit alone? Matter is

innocent; matter is Eternal -- neither created nor destroyed.

158. SATTVA-PREMA

... All one’s living can be very Saatvik, indeed it can even reach the rare plane

of Shuddha Sattva; even sex, the putative source of most sin, can be purely

Saatvik and one could then learn neither to indulge nor to shun or to suppress

it. (It is quite another thing naturally to transcend the plane of sex-inclusive

love.) Poor Vaatsyaayana, if one recalls him right, seems none too aware of

this dimension of the relationship between man and woman. And Gandhi too

missed it by light years when he chose to condemn sex outright, and taking the

cue from brute life, underscored its purpose as mere procreation; equally the

uninhibited Rajneesh, who sold dazed frenzy for the bliss of ecstasy. And had

Freud, the speliologist of lust, ever known Love would he have maneuvered

the libido or hawked it? No, the sole burden of conjugal union should be pure,

unalloyed Love -- even if Nature’s cunning may have designed it for

procreation -- and then sex would be wholly incidental, with little lust in it;

inspired entirely by Prema, sex, to wit sex without Kaama, becomes a fringe

physical extension of Love, eventuating most naturally when it does. It is

ruffian lust76

that leaves one sapped and exhausted, enervated, even depressed

after sex. ‘The expense of spirit in a waste of shame’. Lusty sex by mutual

consent is mutual rape: sorry, even procreation cannot legitimize it -- pace

Gandhi. The truest orgasm, not the lusty counterfeit, but the spontaneous,

intense Saatvik ecstasy that goes with the imperative, bilateral, peaked-up

pinnacle of two-in one fusion is the unmaneuvered fruition of lust-free Love

or maithuna yoga: and the more Saatvik the union the more human and

ethereal the communion. It entails no arcane invocations or rituals, no rude,

taantrik or esoteric initiations or propitiations; neither does it presuppose any

hypnotizing inducement or indoctrinated regimen, much less any tenacious or

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tricky techniques to whip the kundalini up literally. Indeed it precludes all of

them, resting as it does indubitably on the transparent esthetic effulgence of

sweet, mellow, serene Love, uncalculating and incalculable. Love here is the

one sure, unfailing means and the one grand Sublime End. Love and lust are

always inversely related, they always exclude each other. It is lust rather than

sex that must be conquered and without lust sex would never be the

compulsive concomitant of Love. And whatever sex that may incidentally

follow Love, union included, would be saturated with Sattva, elevating it

indeed into a holy communion: when Love is in full bloom, the blossomed

awareness fuses a pure, lust-free psycho-physical communion. Inspired by

wholesome Prema, sex is no longer dominant or compulsive, never the

driving motive force of conjugal life. Only that heightened, total communion

in Love -- as in Ahalya and Indra in the Yoga Vaasishtha / Gopis and Krshna

in the Geeta Govindam and Sreemad Bhaagavatam -- can ever render sex

sacred, transforming it verily into anagha, yes, aghaghna. And that

communion alone can lead to a truly happy matrimony, with no disharmony in

it, whatever. Marriage is a golden opportunity to develop the precious faculty

of consuming Saatvik Love. Such intensely focussed Love can indeed evolve

further, broaden, expand to become Universal Love. (Bless thine enemy, O

Noble Heart! -- Bharati) This is the burden of grhasthaashrama -- none else.

True Love always only gives, needs nothing to receive; as in conjugal Sattva-

Prema either spouse always gives and gives up oneself, is lost in the other, but

needs nothing whatever to receive: either gives up oneself to the other and

neither is there -- That undividable, incorporate77

-- when Love is all, as in the

Phoenix and the Turtle. Brute sensual lust is swept off by ethereal sensuous

love, by the alchemy of chaste wedlock. Only such marriages are made in

heaven; the rest are earthy and turn into hell. How apt is Montaigne: “That so

few marriages are successful only proves the excellence of marriage!”

One may earnestly think about all this with what honest intelligence one can

muster. It is articulated here as one may not come across this kind of

elucidation in the books one may avidly acquire and accumulate (In response

to a letter from a couple).

159. Tenko-San, no doubt, is a great soul and his book78

is the modern

gospel of Karma yoga. Yet, the sevaa he enjoins is not wholly

unmotivated. The service you do, for all its unrelenting dedication, is

propelled by your necessity to cleanse yourself, by your urge to your

own salvation.

160.1 Not a few are exercised over the dismal state of man, the bleak future

of mankind, and invariably the desperate query is: “Can’t there be a

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politics of Peace? How can man be cleansed of the pollution of

power and wealth?”

Not until the exercise of power is the expression of Truth, the

embodiment of Service -- not of domination or exploitation. Really,

not power, but man has to be tamed. Power and wealth don’t corrupt,

they are but the occasion. (“Power shows the man” -- Aristotle.)

Power and wealth are corrupted by man, corruption is in the mind,

the corruption of Awareness is the Ego. Matter is innocent,

materialism is in man, not in matter. Only if mankind could see this

honestly, unreservedly, would politics journey on from Egotism to

Love.

160.2 POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Justice is the temporal translation, the social metamorphosis of Truth --

Eternity sporting Time. The quest for Truth takes to the search for Justice, the

burden of political philosophy. Socrates founded political philosophy by his

life and proved it by his death. Gnostic philosophy, Know Thyself,

transposed, writ large becomes true political philosophy -- which is no

exoteric exercise as fond textualists literally understand -- academics who can

only read the lines, seldom dwell between them. The Polis Eternal brings forth

its essential social extension, the Polis Royal, the just human order, whose end

is the Supreme Good Life. Philosophy necessarily turns political when it

strives to examine life, to probe and determine what by heaven is the right

social order that can translate, extrapolate Truth, convert it into Justice and

confirm it as the central sustenance of authentic community-living. In the

arduous endeavour of adapting society to Truth, without in any way distorting

Truth in the process, of motivating one and all of human beings to it,

philosophy is transformed into Statesmanship.

Justice, to be wrought into the social fabric, if at all, demands the Sovereign

Intelligence that can inspire Statesmanly vision and imagination, and, no less,

a fund of common sense, coupled with the deft accommodative acumen of

wholesome statecraft that is, in truth, resolute Soulcraft. Nothing short of such

versatile, pragmatic endowment can help to steer clear of all the power-hungry

pressures maneuvered by the wolfish appetites of the moment, purge the

abysmal ‘worm of unreason’ in the ur-natural psyche. Only truest Justice can

conserve the lasting concerns of human values against surging mushrooms of

populism or insidious vested interests lurking to gang up to call the tune. And

only a Statesman, who, with utmost caution and tolerant, patient restraint,

seeks to evolve enduring conventions, wise and prudent, that keep reinforcing

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Eternal Verities, may look forward to a tradition that can grow on with

resilience, which yet Time alone can mature, defying the furtive cunning of

the arrant whore.79

“The true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility.

He ought to love and respect his kind, and to fear himself.”80

Michael Oakeshott may protest that leading the world is accomplished, not by

the ardours of thought, but in the mental fog of practical experience, so what is

farthest from our needs is that kings should be philosophers.81

But True Ruling

is altogether different -- and it is no condescending paternalism either. True

Ruling is the ripeness all of the Sovereign Royal Art, the obverse of wisdom

in essence. No doubt it is not born of the ardours of abstract thought but

neither is it spawned by just mind-befogging experience. The aim and

endeavour of real Ruling is to search for the warp and weft of the permeation

of Truth in the fabric of life, individual and communal, to authenticate all

living by the mellow embodiment of Truth.

Such authentic living can seek or chase no course of progress, linear or

otherwise. Neither can it hark back to a presumed point preceding a perceived

downfall, a dreamt-up Golden Age, now lost in the brute march of history.

There is therefore no scope for progress or regress, which sure enough,

doesn’t imply humanity shall take a headlong plunge into a blind alley of civil

perdition. It is not that history is arrested or frozen, and it does not mean that it

need be rolled back in a comic reversal. When Truth may inform life, history

may no longer be predicable of humans, as man can opt out of the very frame

of history. At long last Clio’s unrelieved jeremiad may, one hopes, reach a

grand finale.

The pursuit of Wisdom however is no pursuit of thought. On the contrary, it

entails not only vision and imagination, but that Sovereign Intelligence again

whose inner radiance alone can yield Awareness with the Whole Being, not

just a part, be it the intellect or emotion. The Statesman must be the

acknowledged legislator of the world -- the Gnostic in her/him the

unacknowledged82

(“Where shall we find such a magician?” -- Plato) Wisdom

rules without force or power: when sweet, mellow reason can replace coercion

and in the lucid ambience people perchance muster all the vision to evolve

into Peace and Love, one can hope for the grand inauguration of Transarchy,

which is rule without ruler or ruled, order without organization.

The mind is maayaa, where there is no mind there is no maayaa.

Out of the ashes of aham Anaham is born. Gnyaanamanaham.

Naayamaatmaa labhyaha aatmavichaarasya vichaarena.

Om Tat Sat Anaham.

Here ends Asamvedopanishad, Part I

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87

PART II

SHUDDHA SATTVOPANISHAD

88

89

PARITYAAGA SATYAAGRAHA

OPTING OUT ONLY WAY OUT

90

First edition: December 1984

Second edition: January 1990

Third edition: 2006

Fourth edition: 2009

Harikeshganga

(@ lulu.com)

91

To the Immortal

J. C. Kumarappa

Satish Chandra Dasgupta

Abdul Ghaffar (Badshah) Khan

and

the Mahaa Parityaaga Satyaagrahi

Irom Sharmila*

*Addition to the dedication in 2006

92

93

“Let him who would move the world move himself

first.”

Socrates

“We must become the change that we want to see in the

world.” Gandhi

THERE IS AN URGENT NEED to renew and reinforce

Gandhism, both the social philosophy and the movement.

Yet, it can’t be an exact replication of what Gandhi had said

and done. There is no such thing as Gandhism, the Mahatma

had said; and again he has remarked, even in so far as it may

be there, it is evolving all the time. In fact, he has even added

that his writings should be cremated with himself --

something only a great soul such as he could say but we

common mortals can hardly afford to do.

Much water has flowed since Gandhi’s death and

the evil in man and government has gone to abysmal depths;

the challenges we face today could hardly have been

anticipated in the early fifties. Not that prophets were

wanting but one never thought that doomsday would forestall

us as it were. Man’s inhumanity, in all its stupendous variety,

which has been the dominant theme of human history, had

well nourished itself on the unmitigated sway of barbarous

inanities and the countless cruelties that clinched them under

the tyrannous grip of brute, irrational custom, to which herds

of unthinking humans had but meekly submitted. With the

advent of reason the reign of purblind custom may seem to

have receded from many areas of social life, but nevertheless

inhumanity has surely found its diabolic minions in callous

science and schadenfreudean technology, the formidable

engines of maverick reason. What should Gandhians do to

face the challenge of 1984? In short, what strategy should

they adopt to seek to usher in the dawn of a new order of life

on earth?

Gandhi challenged tyranny, injustice or exploitation,

wherever it was and whatever its dimensions. Nothing could

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cow down the phenomenal soul-force that he, and perhaps he

alone, could muster. Satyaagraha is the priceless invention

he has gifted to humanity. Until the advent of Gandhi, non-

violence was looked upon as a virtue, a quality of moral

excellence in the individual. It was of course well perceived

that the community was only the individual writ large.

Gandhi too never misses this point about the individual, the

Archimedean base of his philosophy. And yet, even for the

individual, as he would see it, non-violence is not just a

quality of character, but a weapon to resist, to fight injustice

and untruth, which constitutes Satyaagraha. It is a weapon

again, not only of the individual but of the community and

the nation, of the mass, no less than man. It was left to the

genius of Gandhi to forge non-violence into such a mass

weapon. Yet, Gandhism must spread to the means before the

means could spread Gandhism. Satyaagraha presupposes

moral elevation of an order that is hardly attainable in the

mass, though, for all that Satyaagraha with him is a

wholesome mass weapon.

Did Gandhi, one wonders, possess the

supererogatory soul-force that could compensate for the

otherwise insurmountable deficiencies of the mass of men

that responded to him as one man? Charisma, one may

choose to call it, but the term, hackneyed by modern social

science, seems to explain little. It may be an uncommon

power born of truth and non-violence, the very foundation of

Gandhism. Yet what took him to the Source, I think, was his

own intrinsic temperament of aparigraha and lokseva. It is

appropriate thus the accent of Gandhians may not directly be

on the metaphysical sanction of Truth or of Non-Violence so

much as on the psychologic urge to give up and serve --

tyagaa and sevaa -- however feeble, tenuous and limited it

may be. The psychology of love and compassion is closer to

the human heart (‘Anbay Sivam’ as the Tamils put it), though

Truth is the metaphysical Source and End of both, indeed of

everything.

Be that as it may, Gandhi represents that elusive or

inexplicable element that binds history and Providence and

we can’t hope for another Gandhi, at least not in the near

future. Gandhism without Gandhi, one must confess, is verily

like Hamlet without the prince of Denmark. As one observes

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the scene, one can clearly see that none amidst us now has the

singular combination of stature -- social, political, moral and

spiritual. The last phase of Jayaprakash Narayan’s life took a

belated turn towards the historic role, yet snatched by death

and no less by vox populi as his whetstone of truth he left

behind but a hurried and unexamined redaction of Gandhism

in the form of total revolution. And by the time one is able

once again to get such an uncommon combination, man’s

inhumanity, particularly political oppression and economic

exploitation, will have reached irreversible proportions. Must

we then wait on the possible avataar of another super-man,

remaining idle spectators in the meantime or can we attempt

something tangible in our own humble way in an earnest

effort to stem the mounting rot? What shape, what direction,

must Gandhism take now in the circumstances?

The new Gandhian movement, it occurs to us, must

seek not a political confrontation with the Establishment so

much as an opting out of politics and the political

dispensation. A political confrontation against authority, no

doubt, can be effective, though not in all contingencies, and

may in fact be relatively easier, assuming people had the

soul-force, the moral courage it calls for. But the counter-

force has to be no less political, perhaps even more and

would entail a counter-organization and establishment, which

would seek to replace that status quo. Gandhi by his

ekaagrata had built up a stupendous organization in the

Congress, which prior to him had not known the middle path

between petitionary memorial and militant violence. But once

freedom was won, while he had the singular detachment to

sense the otiosity of the Congress, the organization itself had

become independent of him, what with its own identities and

interests, and had no qualms over ignoring his urgent plea

that it give up the ghost. So the British raaj could easily be

replaced by an Indian raaj that differs from its imperial

predecessor only in race and colour.

In fighting injustice, dominance and corruption,

what is now proposed is that we seek to evolve an

unstructured movement, the sole aim and object of which

would be the rejection of power and pelf, not so much by

confronting or challenging them as by actually opting out of

the entire social and political dispensation of power. It is an

96

outright, wholesale rejection in the sense that it will be an

opting out of not only the evil but the good as well in the

status quo. And so the votaries of the renewed and reinforced

Gandhian movement will not depend on the modern

framework in any walk of their life, individual or social,

material or moral; they will never look to government or

politics or beyond their immediate society for the solution of

any problem, great or small. It is a plunge into self-reliance,

since they must look to their own initiative and resources;

and it is a leap into the transarchic mode of living, by totally

de-linking oneself from the status quo. This de-linking by

opting out is far superior, both philosophically and

pragmatically, to challenging authority and seeking to

vanquish it, hoping to usher in an anarchist order in the end --

which may not come off because of the built-in

predisposition in the counter-power to become the new

authority. This is how all revolutions have failed all along.

In confronting the British regime in India, Gandhi

may not have explicitly or directly projected the contours of

this opting out or upheld its imperative line of action.

Nevertheless, it is without doubt the underlying principle, the

fundamental implication, of his Hind Swaraj, where he insists

on opting out of the colonial imposition and the industrial

economy in toto. And he has often declared that if the entire

nation refused to accept the foreign rule, by the very refusal

freedom would be wrought in a single day. Only he felt it was

quite premature to look for such a fused national will and

pending that, he found it prudent to adopt the path of

laboured, graduated resistance, of course non-violent.

Gandhi had also tried, by and large, in his Phoenix

and Tolstoy Farms, to initiate this sort of opting out, in South

Africa, an experiment he continued mutatis mutandis even in

India later. (Thoreau had done it all by himself, going it alone

at Walden.) It is clearly again the direction which the

endeavours of the redoubtable Gandhian, the late Satish

Chandra Dasgupta, even of Shantidas in Europe, point to.

Gandhi, it would be seen vis-à-vis British rule was thus

operating simultaneously on two planes -- of confrontation

and of opting out.

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The plane of confrontation needed no small

organization, which was, in the nature of things, geared to

capturing power but having captured it was in no mood to

seek or exercise the moral faculty to disband itself or outgrow

the focus of power as the central fact of collective life. So, no

wonder, even at the very outset it began to resent the

Gandhian voice of truth as something anachronistic and out

of tune with the rapidly emerging interests and pressures of

the up-and-coming new order. Gandhi himself had been

disposed of (none too early?) and there were none with a

comparable moral stature, even if they had the conviction, to

succeed him. Even so, the Establishment seemed desperately

to need somebody who could play the Mahatma and would

willingly oblige it with a legitimation that could pass muster.

The Sarkaari Saadhu readily stepped into the vacuum to play

the sainted courtier, as if to the manner born, and neutralized

the Gandhian resistance to evil in all possible ways precisely

by posing to improve upon it83

. He sought to clinch his

unchallenged asseveration (1952) that Gandhi’s Satyaagraha

was gross -- he himself had evolved something superior,

subtler! -- by citing the genteel laureate whose silken

conscience had been outraged by the wrong coercion that, in

his view, Satyaagraha entailed.

Yet, one invokes Satyaagraha to resist the myriad

forms of tyranny, of force, fraud, evil and injustice, and the

resistance itself knows no malice, rancour or animosity. It is

in truth no resistance at all in the gross sense, but an

impassioned appeal, even to the opaque conscience of the

opponent, an unyielding endeavour to shake him out of his

vainglorious slumber. Non-violence is not just the negative

fact of non-injury but positive radiation of love. It is the law

of life -- the good life, no mere brute living -- which is the

law of love. Hate sin, not the sinner and love thine enemy,

while yet fighting his injustice, his tyranny, proclaims the

Mahatma, and it is no idle exhortation. Is this Satyaagraha

gross, and does it resort to ‘wrong type of pressure’?

The Saint of Paunar’s comic claim (1952) that he

would resort to Satyaagraha at a time and in a manner that no

one would oppose it, can be no more than a hollow flight of

fancy. When nobody would oppose it, pray, where is the

scope for Satyaagraha or the need for it? When nobody

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would oppose Satyaagraha who would Satyaagraha ‘oppose’?

And must the struggle against the mounting evil and misery

in human life, destined to be Sisyphean for so long, wait on

the dawn of that auspicious moment? Would it not indeed be

tantamount to sneaking assistance to evil, even colluding with

it, instead of openly resisting it? Philosophy of assistance

indeed with a vengeance! “Rama does not shoot his arrow

twice” he declaims (1952) but the point is Rama has to shoot

it at all. And, without a shadow of doubt, it was only very

gross Satyaagraha that the whited mimete so indignantly

threatened to launch (1979) in a desperate attempt to coerce

legislation against cow-slaughter. The many Vinobite

vulgarizations – he had turned fobbing into a fine art - his

tabloid formulas, tinsel slogans and windy labels served only

to enfeeble the unique Gandhian legacy of resistance and it

was rendered even more vacuous by the endless sterile forays

of a legion of academics in the barber’s chair that

Jayaprakash Narayan seemed to inspire by his queer pitch to

dish up Gandhism on academic stilts. And the result is

Gandhism today, which is Gandhism literally of the

graveyard; it exists and functions nowhere except at Rajghat

where they choose to honour the Mahatma, placing wreath

upon wreath.

If we steer clear of all the pseudo-Gandhian debris

that has accumulated since Gandhi’s death, it would be seen

that the form of state or mode of government is by no means

relevant to Satyaagraha. The question whether Satyaagraha

has any place in a free, democratic society or whether it is

possible or effective in an autocracy, where there is no rule of

law, betrays a certain ignorance of its foundations84

. Injustice

or evil is not the less vicious for being democratic and

popular sanction is no criterion of truth 85

. Where self-

government is no good government it can claim no special

privilege or prerogative and must be resisted no less. But

resistance, even non-violent, must always be the last resort,

be it democracy or dictatorship.

Those who seek to rest non-violence on the rule of

law or discount its efficacy in an autocracy fail to recall that

Gandhi has dismissed the sanction of public opinion. “I have

drawn a distinction between passive resistance of the weak

and active non-violent resistance of the strong. The latter can

99

and does work in the teeth of the fiercest opposition” 86

; “.....

a single individual (can) defy the whole might of an unjust

empire.” 87

“I do not believe”, Gandhi affirms, “as some do,

that non-violence can only be offered in a civilized or

partially civilized society. Non-violence admits of no such

limit” And success or failure as commonly understood is no

criterion of non-violence; it is the characteristic of truth to

function in the manner of Nishphala Karma. The

Satyaagrahi’s concern is not simply the justice of his own

cause, but even more, the urgency to cure the opponent of his

injustice. So, paradoxical as it may sound, in fighting his

opponent he is really turning the opponent against the

opponent himself. Resistance thus becomes the truest

assistance. It is a sacred Socratic duty cast on him as

physician of the soul, and there is no intrinsic evil in the soul.

So, Gandhi could proclaim, ‘defeat has no place in the

dictionary of non-violence’ 88

.

Opting out of modernity and the modern power

structure, to put it unambiguously, is to go primitive, in the

prime sense of the term. It is to negate - and negate

completely - the modern mode of life, its economics and

politics, its education and culture, and not the least, its

malevolent psychology. And as opting out means, not driving

out authority from around you, but driving yourself out from

the precincts of authority, you don’t have to look to other

people or seek their approbation or endorsement to do it. It

must be an individual Satyaagraha from first to last and only

statistically speaking can it be collective. One plunges all by

oneself without waiting for the next man or the herd to join

him. It is the flight of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull; others

are welcome to go with you but you keep soaring no less

without company. Athanasius contra mundum. It demands a

total negation of power in all its contours and ramifications;

to look to the other man for his assent or support in your

renunciation is to seek his power to complement your

diffidence or impotence; and it is evidence only of your meek

inability to opt out of the smug security of power. The only

power of Svaraaj is the power of love, the power of service --

power that has not a shade of force.

Civilised man’s life has been based on force only

because he has been acquisitive and possessive, and his lust

100

excites jealousy, leading to competition and conflict. It may

be lust for power or glory, money or sex, or it may take

myriad other forms, but it is the only reason why wants must

always outstrip resources and so lust must excite hate,

violence and war. As society is the individual writ large it is

only the megalomania of man that becomes the morbid

hypertrophy of society, the power drive that motivates either

being the same.

So, when men negate power, opting out of it, when

lust no longer can corrupt them, society is radically cut to

size and must in a manner of speaking wither away except,

maybe, in a notional sense, and the simple community comes

into its own: Graam Svaraaj as Gandhi aptly christened it.

Graam because when there is neither fevered commerce nor

phrenetic technology, the village, self-reliant and

autonomous, is the true fountain head of human life and

culture. The underlying tenor of such living is aparigraha,

which expresses itself through the pervasive continuity and

harmony, peace and content, and simple and plain living, that

mark off pristine village life.

Now, the quality of such a way of living, -- a

Buddhist economy as E. F. Schuhmacher would hail it --

can’t be tricked in by a plan, program or method. At bottom it

must spring from the individual and there can be social

aparigraha only if and when such individuals become

common and can by their individual excellence and

numerical preponderance radiate an unmistakable atmosphere

of daama, daana, dayaa 89

, and Gnyaana, the charpoy of

aparigraha or Parityaaga, so to speak. Once a climate of

common weal comes about and a pantheistic sense

(Eesaavaasyamidam sarvam) of fulfillment without

possession grows into a stable tradition, it is possible for

posterity readily to receive it and by evolving in the

environment naturally integrate itself with it. But prior to

such social evolution the principle and the process must

proceed from the individual end only.

It may be opting out and it may be rooted in the

individual as such, but it can’t still help acquiring a certain

political salience, if only by Establishmentarian ascription, or

even fatal infamy by earning the wrath of the Establishment,

101

since the logical end of it is the disruption of the

Establishment and dissolution of power and politics. While it

is open to one and all to opt out of power-ridden social life, to

choose Walden or Graam Svaraaj, given the common run of

human beings, not many, even left to themselves (discounting

the Establishment), may exercise the choice in the

foreseeable future. It need not, as we have seen, hold back

one or the few, since Svaraaj is no statistic polity, but

actually a good many may fall between two stools and find

themselves in a sort of habitual halfway house nearly all the

time. In such cases, when the opting out can’t go whole hog,

where do we draw the line? Gandhi was an irrepressible

optimist, to quote his own words, and if one had faith in

one’s mission (how can one have a mission without faith?)

there could be no ground for the ‘fatal vice’ of pessimism.

The faith and hope that men can and will change and become

perfect enough, can never abandon true servants of humanity.

So, in spite of cormorant devouring time they must wait on

people who can’t or won’t change now, make many a

compromise, if on the fringes, resiliently sticking always to

the hard core. “The Hundredth Name of Allah is for the

s

well as plant) all the time”90

.

One area where such compromise, up to a point,

may be foremost is communication and transport, not to

speak of money and banking, which seem to symbolize the

heart of modern mobility. The essence of compromise is to

conserve through a degree of pliability and a sovereign

principle can become human only by a certain

accommodation to frailty whose name is homo sapiens.

“Gods will give us some faults to make us men” 91

. Sat must

always refracted as Satya on earth; the idiom of truth on earth

must be a human idiom and servants of humanity, in so far as

they may fail to sympathize with human inadequacies, may

verily lapse into inhumanity. Even so compromise must

always be the minimum necessary in the circumstances and

in the case on hand the choice must be slanted towards the

relatively smaller, simpler and slower. One must therefore

learn to prefer the post to telegraph or telephone, the roadway

and railway to the airway. But one can be none too careful

102

and vigilant in choosing the lesser evil and keeping it in

check.

Compromises of this sort may incidentally serve to

aid the cause of the grand Satyaagraha of opting out of force,

as the very means of modernity may be used against itself; a

compromise in the field of communication and transport may

incidentally help in the propagation and diffusion of

aparigraha more effectively. Compromise, though, may not

mean more compromise -- the thin end of the wedge -- and,

once again, one must be sure enough when and where to halt

it. And whilst it is a concession to human frailty, and may be

taken advantage of to promote the cause one may not oneself

indulge in it otherwise.

This is but a humble plea for Satyaagraha that is

Parityaaga, which is no romantic vision or idle dream. Yet,

Parityaaga Satyaagraha is nothing short of Vasishtha’s

veritable Brahmadanda -- against Vishwamitra’s potent array

of missiles -- or the heroic meekness of Christ. ‘Resist not

evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn

to him the other also’. Love is wisdom’s lone weapon against

the brute force of ignorance. Men are there on earth right now

who posses such wisdom. If they are Thoreaus isolated there

would be Waldens, little pellucid ponds scattered in the vast

expanse of the arid social desert; but if perchance they make

an incidental multitude the surging waters of Satsvaraaj can

surely flood the desert, turn it green -- for ever. The dawn of

Raajateeta is in our hands.

Our state is small, its people are few; soldiers

and weapons may abound, yet are never used;

boats and carts none too few, but none to ride

them even so.

The folks have returned to the knotted cords 92;

their plain food is sweet, their rough garment

fine; content in their homes, they are happy in

their simple ways.

The neighbouring state is within earshot; each

may hear the barking dogs and crowing cocks

across; even so, folks of either grow old, and

growing old die, yet have never once exchanged

a call.

103

(Tao Te Ching, V.80; free translation.)

(26 April 1984)

104

APPENDIX I

Dear…

…It, seems to me, we must, first and foremost, seek

to plant the ph

no means an easy task. The Gandhian message of opting out

is being made explicit, maybe, for the first time and people

may find it queer enough. On top of it, if we bring in, as you

seem to suggest, the idea of concurrently challenging

authority, it may be asking for much greater psychological

resistance than we could hope to handle and as a result we

may fail to get across even the initial idea of opting out to the

people.

Secondly, challenging authority would come up anyhow,

when authority tries to suppress opting out, but it would

perhaps happen at the second stage of the movement. If the

challenge precedes the diffusion of the philosophy, it would

be no more than asking for a replacement of the government

in power. The Janata revolution of 1977 did precisely that,

but the Janata Government that followed it was little better,

though Jayaprakash himself was not to blame. Yet, the

replacement of one super-government by another takes us

nowhere.

It may seem pragmatic to proceed step by step and look upon

such replacement as the first step. But this business of

replacement dissipates the revolution and leads to

disillusionment. We would stay where we were and all our

struggle would go waste. Gandhi’s own experience in 1947

clinches the point.

It is better therefore to make the ultimate end doubly clear

and tailor our policy and program to that end right from the

beginning. How to go about it then? We may seek to evolve a

dedicated community of kindred souls -- a hundred or even

much less would do to begin with -- to go to some god-

forsaken place within the country and inaugurate Graam

Svaraaj, run it wholly on our own initiative and resources,

never approach the government or any outside agency for

anything. It would be an actual, concrete, demonstration of

Graam Svaraaj in operation, an honest example of an

autonomous community, whose autonomy is founded on

105

aparigraha -- where there is no government, no power,

politics or money. The community would need no defense

because it has nothing to defend except Truth and its one and

only defensive weapon is the Satyaagraha of Ahimsa.

Once this can be demonstrated, although on a very small

scale, and the experience of it diffused and radiated around, it

would be the right time to think of confronting the status quo

and its authority as it may choose to challenge the community

and its autonomy. Because the community in question is

wholly autonomous and has nothing to do with the state and

its setup, its opting out would come to mean an outright

rejection of the state’s authority, its laws and administration,

and thus it would be an outright negation of political

obligation in every sense. It would naturally occasion non-

cooperation, disobedience and refusal to pay taxes. The

campaign should snowball if the community won’t yield

come what may. And the campaign would be entirely non-

violent. If the community is truly founded on aparigraha, it

can’t be coerced into obedience and the state too may not find

it worthwhile coercing it. So if it can preserve its autonomy

with tenacity in the teeth of opposition, the message of

Graam Svaraaj must pick up and the time may not be too far

off when life without politics, power or pelf may not seem

crazy.

Doubtless it wouldn’t be near enough to reach soon.

Meanwhile to stir up public conscience, to keep the wick of

Parityaaga burning at least, we may try to infiltrate the idea

of opting out by the back door as it were. This could be done,

I think, if we launched a campaign of, not boycotting

elections, because that may facilitate personation, but

deliberately casting invalid votes. If the campaign picked up,

it must nullify elections, and this is important, as the entire

edifice of the so-called democratic state, its power,

domination and exploitation, rests squarely on the alleged

sanction conferred by elections. It is the dubious popular

election that is supposed to legitimate the democratic state

and government, its manifold tyranny and callous injustice.

And if we seek to pull off the democratic veneer of the state

and render it manifestly illegitimate, we must do all we can

do to nullify elections. That I think, is the foremost phase of

our challenge to the status quo.

106

APPENDIX II

Trusteeship is the least elaborated and as a result, the least

understood, aspect of Gandhism. Although Gandhi traced it

to the Eesopanishad and the Bhagavad Geetaa and knew that

the scriptures of other traditions too sanctioned it, what

initially opened his eyes to it was Anglo-Saxon equity.

Gandhi himself was in no doubt about the tenets of the

doctrine or its implications, the means to its attainment or the

mode of its operation. Perhaps it was partly because he was

most clear and certain about it himself that he did not

articulate it at length. Trusteeship is a clear pointer to

aparigraha, an ideal enjoined by the earliest Indian texts and

reiterated by Gandhi. Since aparigraha goes with

nishkartrtva (non-doership) trusteeship aims at karmaphala

tyaaga (renouncing the fruits of action) extolled by the

Bhagavad Geetaa…

As Gandhi passed away, towering Gandhians like Satish

Chandra Dasgupta, J. C. Kumarappa, J. B. Kripalani came to

be discounted, when the movement destined to be led by the

epigone, was shepherded by Vinoba. And Gandhism seemed

to recede from active engagement in the struggle for social

justice, even sport a certain ersatz religiosity, and turn

indifferent to social concern. Appropriately enough about this

time it became ideal grist to the academic mills and recondite

interpretations and expositions have kept pouring to instruct

us how correctly to conceive Gandhism.

Gandhi did not rule out state intervention or government

control in the practical evolution of trusteeship but few can,

on that ground, plead that he would have countenanced the

patent pro-establishmentarian genuflexion of Vinobite

philosophy. In his attempt to improve on Gandhism, Vinoba

declared Gandhian Satyaagraha quite crude and to clinch his

statement he chose to invoke Rabindranath Tagore’s criticism

of the Gandhian boycott of foreign goods in the twenties.

Gandhi’s ahimsa insisted on social justice but Vinoba, in

effect, seemed progressively to stress order itself as the

ultimate end of social life. It is a far cry from the

Eesopanishad to the Leviathan, but, maybe,

107

Anusaasanaparva could play the expedient sandwich to glue

them together! No wonder the saint became the sarkaari

saadhu and Bhoodaan, which was launched with

Establishmentarian endorsement and official fanfare, to

counter communist insurgency in Telengana in the fifties,

ended up as a tame exercise in vacuous inflation of Gandhian

terminology. Vinoba fondly believed that Bhoodaan could be

the one sovereign subsuming principle and to that end

dismissed time-tested Gandhian institutions, including the

impeccable constructive program. And bhoodaan, as though a

niche had been earmarked for it -- much like khadi and

village industries to date -- freely subsisted on heavy official

patronage.

APPENDIX III

THE ACADEMIC AND THE AUTHENTIC

Why are we so critical of the academic and academic

‘knowledge’? Indeed, why are we so unacademic? Homo

academicus proclaims himself to be detached and objective,

qualities that are as rare as they are unexceptionable. Who

can deny that to be fair and reasonable demands examining

both sides of a question; and often enough a question has

more than the proverbial two sides. So to explore an issue, to

investigate the truth of it, one must be wholly open-minded

and take no sides. Neutrality therefore is the prime

prerequisite of the quest for knowledge. Yet -- and this can’t

be overemphasized -- it can be only an initial or instrumental

neutrality, a heuristic imperative, which alone can ensure the

sensitivity or openness to truth. And once the end is attained,

to wit, knowledge is gained, neutrality has no further function

or basis. Knowledge to be objective, must discriminate -- the

true from the false, the good from the evil; and it is

discrimination not only in theory but in practice.

Now neutrality is no objectivity, but only the means to

objectivity, and by no means an end in itself. What is the

academic’s objectivity that is so much advertised, how far

does he stand committed to it or act upon it? Many an

academic can discriminate, no doubt, but he can only in

word, not in deed. How is his objectivity effective then, how

108

is it any more than a ritual pose in theory for the nonce? To

many an academic objectivity has come to mean a technical

tool of the wage-earner’s art and the habit of neutrality,

which is the gestation of that objectivity, an expedient

transposited from an instrumental phase of livelihood to a

counter-active end of living. Academic knowledge is not

knowing to be and the uninformed living contradicts

authentic knowing. In fine, the academic can examine

everything except his own life! A serious academic may have

earnestly studied the Upanishads or the Tao, Socrates or

Jesus and, all the same, his own awareness or being seems no

different for the exposure to the great message. He doesn’t

doubt its authenticity or truth and yet his own life, in thought,

word or deed, seldom accords with it. Whence the paradox?

What is the worth of his ‘knowledge’, in what sense is it

knowledge at all?

The academic’s ‘knowledge’, it would seem, involves not

‘knowing’ itself but only ‘knowing about’; it is conceptual,

not substantive or existent. A concept is not the thing; a

concept of truth is no truth. It is, to use the grammatical

idiom, intransitive, that is to say, objectless, and queer

enough, it still claims to be objective; whereas, a concept

which is an intellectual abstraction, is not even subjective

because it is not, honestly speaking, integral to the subject.

Neither objective nor subjective, a concept is but a phantom.

The ego or existent self is no concept, no abstraction, to the

subject. And that self, it cannot be overemphasized, is not the

intellect, the manufactory of concepts. The intellect is a

peripheral detachment of the ego that it unleashes to sally

forth in logic chopping; it is a logistic, however, from the

periphery to anything outside it, rarely, if at all, from the

periphery towards the centre. In fact, the intellect, which can

not function except by a process of abstracting the ‘other’, is

in essence alienated from the existent self; the intellect can

observe the self too only as the ‘other’.

In studying the truth that the Upanishads or the Buddha,

Socrates or Gandhi expounded, what the academic attains is

not the truth itself but a concept of it, the shadow, not the

substance, ‘knowledge’ that is no virtue. It can engage his

intellect without impacting his being, without animating or

sustaining his living. Liberal education, much prized as it is,

109

must prove to be quite vicious, if its knowledge can bear no

fruition into virtue. And he is an academic whose knowledge

‘We know the good, we apprehend it clearly. But we can’t

bring it to achievement’, laments Phaedro (Euripides:

Hippolytus). Duryodhana (Mahabharata) confesses that he

can recognize evil, yet can’t free himself of it. Such minds

can conceive of the good without being or becoming good.

Plato’s being was authentic in no small way, nevertheless, he

could be bitten by the academic bug. With the founding of his

Academy, the thin end of the wedge, the Trojan horse had

been let in. Hence Kierkegaard’s pronouncement: “Imagine

yourself as a contemporary of Socrates. There is no science

or scholarship here; this is just what he (Socrates) wants to

eliminate. …But then he dies, in Plato the existential is

diminished, then comes science and scholarship. Is Plato

greater than Socrates? Yes, perhaps when assistant professors

judge, but then they must be consistent and judge that a

professor of theology is greater than Christ”. Plato’s

Academy is the Turin Shroud of Socrates.

APPENDIX IV

The passion to ‘return to nature’ seems to be gaining

momentum. But are we sure we have comprehended the inner

meaning of the call? Does the bulk of the so-called ecological

movement launched the world over truly represent it? One

must pause here to note that many an ecological movement in

its origin and accent demonstrates, an overwhelming concern

for the future of the human race, which is bleak enough,

thanks to the persistent suicidal follies of man. No doubt such

concern reflects no small social awareness and moral

commitment, qualities that are conspicuously absent in the

scientific establishment. Yet it demands keener, deeper,

percipience to sense that this interest in nature is more often

incidental than intrinsic, seeking as it does to suffer nature

only in so far as it serves man’s selfish interest in

perpetuating his own species.

Is it impossible to transcend this selfishness, to have instead a

truly ecosophic perspective, one that is rooted in Nature as

110

the Plenary Matrix, of which man himself is an integral, but

humble, part? Indeed man has so functioned as an integral

part in simpler societies much before the onset of the

industrial revolution and the propulsion of mechanical

progress that is endemic to it.

There can be no real poverty wherever man remains integral

to Nature. (Poverty has no place in Walden). The only honest

answer to the modern or economic problem is not progressing

from a modernized poverty to a fancied horizon of dubious

prosperity, equally modernized, but resurrecting nature and

reintegrating man to nature’s economy. That indeed is the

implied philosophy and entailed program behind the

articulate accent of Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj. So reintegrated

man would realize once again his humble integral place in

nature, human life would cease to be acquisitive or

competitive and economics dismal, exploitive and insidious.

The tribal folk today have been reduced to abject indigence

only by the vicious intrusion and domination of civilized

man, who has mercilessly exploited them, robbing them of

their very source of existence. The answer to it however is

not a belated expiation by imposing our pet notions of

progress and welfare on them, collecting and collectivizing

charity and distributing doles to them or fabricating health

and employment schemes wholly alien and inimical to their

culture, to their very living. One may not question the motive

of some of the philanthropic projects, but however well-

meant, they smack of civilized arrogance, seldom noticed,

and are vicious even in their conception as they are in their

execution.

One may, on occasion, not be disposed to discount the

descending (not necessarily condescending) humanitarianism

from above, be it of the bureaucratic or bhadralok variety or

the professional samaritanism of voluntary agencies and

foundations, particularly when it seeks to meet a felt want of

the communities at the receiving end and is progressively

operated on local resources. Yet, increasingly one can see the

dependants taking to such modernized and institutionalized

assistance only because they have no scope for (or hope of)

resurrecting their time-tested way of living. Such assistance,

when ad hoc, may not be injurious or inappropriate at a

111

pinch, say, in the wake of any natural calamity. (Yet, China

could turn down urgent offers of international aid during her

disastrous earthquake in the seventies). But as a regular mode

of social regeneration it is bound to be counter-productive

and dehumanize the people who have learnt to wait on doles

or become passive participants in an eleemosynary welfare,

thrust on them by professional humanitarians, that must erode

their original vision of well being.

There can be no authentic notion of human well-being prior

to a total perception of Nature and man’s place in Nature’s

dispensation. Such a perception need not be literate or

articulate. And when Nature is so understood and accepted,

human welfare follows, indeed flows out of it. Most social

service programs operate on an unexamined plank of

presumed welfare, without first probing the plenary,

particularly the elusive, hidden, dimensions of Nature and

their very intricate bearing on human living, social and

individual. Invariably they must all seek to redesign nature

(the sinister social forestry, for example) in expedient

response to urgent pressures and immediate wants, lording it

over nature, playing super-

which must result, sooner or later, in an egregious travesty of

nature, not without the nemesis that may prove fatal to

humanity, defeating the myopic vision of human survival. So,

can we return to Primeval Plenary Nature (Brhadaaranya) and

reestablish our integral well-being in Her? Can we think of an

ongoing Brhadaaranya movement that would bring forth an

ecoculture, nourish it in action and repair the unspeakable

damage to nature by man in this century?

A Brhadaaranya setting that can restore Nature in her

Plentitude is the foremost need and to that end the green

forests, large and small, must return in their full bloom,

unfettered by social demands and technological pressures. If

the ecological crisis proves anything it is the imperative of a

total reorientation of human life and thought, a radical change

in our weltanchauung. Yet it is nothing to be piously

professed or noisily propagated, but must inform every facet

of our existence, transform our attitudes and habits, not the

least of all, food. The sort of agriculture that is both necessary

and permissible must thoroughly accord with nature and

therefore be conservative, in the sense of conserving Nature.

112

Let no one doubt that such conservative agriculture can cater

for the simple needs of honest nutrition.

Here ends Shuddhasattvopanishad /

Parityaaga Satyaagraha, Part II of

ASAMVEDOPANISHAD

I will give you a talisman. Whenever you

are in doubt, or when the self becomes

too much with you, apply the following

test. Recall the face of the poorest and

weakest man whom you have seen, and

ask yourself, if the step you contemplate

is going to be of any use to him. Will he

gain anything by it? Will it restore him

to a control over his own life and

destiny? In other words, will it lead to

swaraaj for the hungry and spiritually

starving millions? Then you will find

your doubts and your self melting away.

Mahatma Gandhi

113

Notes and References

1 “The Texts alone I know, not the Self.” Chaandogya Upanishad,

7.1.3. Here Mantra stands for the Vedas.

2 Who: Maha Yoga, Ramanashram,Tiruvannamalai, p.232.

3 The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Treatises by an English

Mystic of the Fourteenth Century, ed. Abbot Justin McCann,

Westminster, Maryland, 1952. Here: The Epistle of Privy

Counsel, chapter six, p.116.

4 Neti neti is but unlearning.

5 This Self is not obtained by inquiry about Self-inquiry, thus avers

the Asamvedopanishad, 15.2.

6 Anaham indeed (is) Brahman, thus avers the Asamvedopanishad

15.2.

7 “I am God.”

8 The Cloud of Unknowing: the quote is the second part of the title.

9 Abiding after passing away.

10

Shakespeare: Henry the Fifth, V.2.256.(Yale)

11

Shakespeare: Hamlet, II.2.259-260.(Yale)

12

Chaandogya Upanishad, 3.14.1

13

St.Luke, 10.42

14

Because vice is ignorance, driving one to wrong.

15

So to Know is to Be.

114

16

Paul Valèry: Eupalinos

17

“This Self is not attained by the pusillanimous,”

Mundakopanishad, 3.2.4

18

So reports Manas, 14 May 1980, p.4.

19

Leo Strauss: What is Political Philosophy and Other Essays,

Greenwood Press, 1973. p.153.

20

Idries Shah: Thinkers of the East, Penguin, pp. 66-67.

21

Understanding Islam, p.87.

22

It is worth exploring how far Yudhishthira’s truth is Egoless,

since his falsehood is so self-conscious.

23

Mundakopanishad, 3.2.3 ; also Kathopanishad, 2.23.

24

Also in Tamil: “Nooleni vinnera noorkuparutti vaippaar/Polay

karuvi nannoor bodham.” -- Taayumaanavar:

Paraaparakkanni,186

(“Learning Scriptures for Salvation! As well plant cotton for

yarn to make a rope-ladder and climb on to heaven!”)

“Nunniya noolpala karpinun marruntan

Unmai arivay migum.“ -- Tirukkural , 373.

(“Knowledge of the Self excels the many subtle books one may

learn.”)

25

I.15 and XV.20.

26

Tradition and Revolution, Orient Longman, 1973.

27

Sannyasopanishad, 2.17. Cf. also Mahaabhaarata: Saanti Parva,

12.329.40.

28

“For the achievement of zen enlightenment an apprenticeship of

gruelling toil is the indispensable prerequisite.” - R.C. Zaehner:

Zen Drugs and Mysticism, p.125 (The author of Zen and the Art

115

of Motor Cycle Maintenance must restart his odyssey to discover

the true Socrates and the Source of his Reason.).

29

By implication, the perceptions that precede and succeed the

gaps or intervals must be only thoughts.

30

Swarajya (Annual), January 1973.

31

“Learning is purgation.” TR, d. 10 (TR: Tradition and

Revolution; d: dialogue).

32

TR, d.19; also First and Last Freedom; ques. and ans. 9.

33

TR, d.8.

34

Beyond Violence.

35

Indian Express, Madras, 9 December 1976.

36

Vrtti Gnyaana.

37

Idem

38

Idem

39

Swarajya (Annual), January 1973.

40

Has the Bhagavad Geetaa said anything without schematizing

it?

41

Chaandogya Upanishad, 8.3.4.

42

Such as God, Truth, Being, Brahman, Aatman or Self, Infinite,

That, Intelligence or Awareness.

43

Every tradition was a revolution!

44

On the place of thought, desire, joy, in Krishnamurti’s system,

see Rohit Mehta’s The Nameless Experience, Motilal

Banarsidass.

116

45

J. Krishnamurti: The Only Revolution, 1970, p.175. Emphasis

added.

46

Ibid., p. 38. Emphasis added.

47

Ramana Maharshi in Sri Ramana Reminiscences by G.V.

Subbaramayya, p. 40.

48

Lutyens, M, The Years of Awakening.

49

Madras Talks, 1977-78.

50

Ramana Maharshi in Day by Day with Bhagavan by Devaraja

Mudaliar, Ramanaashram, p. 290.

51

Saakshaat-kaara = Trans-perception

52

Ramana Maharshi in Sri Ramana Reminiscences by G.V.

Subbaramayya, p. 153.

53

Hobbes: Leviathan, I.2. para 5.

54

Rg Veda, 1:164:16.

55

See (14) above. “Abhayam vai Brahma,” Brh.Up..4.25.

56

Idries Shah: Thinkers of the East, Penguin, p. 36.

57

All this is God-pervaded; Eesaavaasyopanishad, 1.

58

Order Change and Democracy, Madras, 1973, pp.30-31.

59

‘Personate’ to indicate for the nonce both the simulation of

freedom and the personal base involved in the freedom.

60

Chaandogya Upanishad, 1.6.7.

61

Brhadaaranyaka Upanishad, 4.2.2.

117

62

Mundaka Upanishad, 3.2.11.

63

Ramana Maharshi in Sri Ramana Reminiscences by G.V.

Subbaramayya, p. 26.

64

Where is salvation in ‘I’, or ‘I’ in salvation? I-less is True God.

65

“I am Brahman.”

66

How motivated is the ‘service’! And is God ever in need that

you can indeed serve Him? (When the person dissolves is there

personal God?) Surrender is giving up oneself, not posing to

play the servant.

67

See item 4.

68

Sattva and satya are respectively, so to speak, the reflection and

refraction of Sat (Reality) in the Platonic cave, i.e., on the

common human plane. Sat is satyasya satyam (Brhad. Upan.

2.1.20).

69

W.B. Yeats in Vision.

70

The Gnyaani breaks into song out of love and compassion.

71

W.B. Yeats: The Cutting of an Agate

72

Shakespeare: As You Like It, III. 3.15-16. (Yale)

73

Charles Williams: “Poetry at Present” by Lascelles

Abercrombie, in: Douglas Bush, Science and Poetry -- A

Historical Sketch 1590-1950, OUP 1950,p.159.

74

R. Bhaskaran in Kanakavaippu by Kaarai Siddhar.

75

Shakespeare: The Comedy of Errors, II. 2.124. (Yale)

76

Ibid.

77

Shakespeare: The Comedy of Errors, II.2.113. (Yale)

118

78

A New Road to Ancient Truth, Allen & Unwin, 1960.

79

Shakespeare: King Lear, II.iv.56. (Yale)

80

Reflections on the French Revolution, Everyman’s edition, 1953,

p.165. Emphasis added.

81

Oakeshott. M., Experience and Its Modes, CUP, 1985, p.320.

82

“We have no gift to set a statesman right.” W.B.Yeats in: ‘On

Being Asked for a War Poem’ from The Wild Swans at Coole.

83

It must be noted nevertheless that Vinoba was for direct action

during the Pehngi-Badakhli agitation in the Mungur district of

Bihar in 1955.

84 “I do not believe, as some do, that non-violence can only be

offered in a civilized or partially civilized society. Non-violence

admits of no such limit.” Gandhi. Vide, D.G. Tendulkar: Abdul

Ghaffar Khan, Popular Prakashan, Bombay, 1967. P. 449.

85 See Harijan, 17.12.1938, where Gandhi declares that non-

violence does not need the sanction of public opinion.

86 Ibid. Italics added.

87 Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 18, P. 1333.

88 Harijan, 20.2.1937

89 Brhadaaranyaka Upanishad, vii.3.

90 Shah, Idries (quoting a sufi saint) in Thinkers of the East,

Penguin, U.K., p.22. (The words within brackets have been

added).

“-- the poor beetle, that we tread upon,

In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great

As when a giant dies.”

Shakespeare: Measure for Measure -- III. i.77-79.

91 Shakespeare; Antony and Cleopatra, V.i.33-34.

92 An old Chinese method of recording that preceded writing.

119

GLOSSARY

Aabhaasa: Image

Aananda: Bliss

Aanandamaya: Bliss-filled

Aananda-maya-kosa: The veil of joy over Awareness

Aasaa: Desire, hope

Aatma Gnyaana: Self- Knowledge

Aatman: Self

Aatma vichaara: Self- Inquiry

Abhaava: Absence of bhaava/ identity

Abhaya: Fearlessness

Adhikaara: Fitness, sanction, eligibility, credentials

Agha : Sin

Anagha: Sinlesss

Aghaghna: Curing / eliminating sin

Agnyeya: Agnostic

Agynyaana: Ignorance

Aham: Ego

Ahambhaava/Ahamkaara: Egoity / Egotism

Ahimsa: Non-violence

Amanaska: No-mind, mind-less (see manonaasa,

Mrtmanas)

Anaham: Egoless

Anaham-manas: Egoless mind, (Amanaska / Mrtamanas)

Anamnesis: Recollection; retroversion of intelligence

(see nivrtti)

Anbay Sivam: Love indeed (is) God.

Aparigraha: Non-possession.

Apaurusheya: Not involving human agency; 'trans-

personate'

Asamveda: Non-perception, non-cognition, non-

experience

Asat: Non-Being, unreal

A-vyavahaarya: Non-phenomenal-ity, being culture - free

120

Bhaashya: Commentary

Bhaava: Mental image; quasi; 'imagize',

'imagization', identity

Bhaava-maaya: The 'as if real- phenomenate' (see

maayaa).

Bhakti: Devotion, piety

Brahma: God as creator in the trinity (see Shiva and

Vishnu)

Brahmadanda: Holy sceptre; sacred staff

Brahman: Being, Reality

Chaarpai: Cot

Chidaabhaasa: Mental image

Chit: Awareness

Daama: Restraint

Daana: Gift, charity

Dakshinaayana: Solar transit from Cancer to Capricorn.

Daridra, naaraayana: God as penury (Naaraayana, sobriquet of

Vishnu)

Dayaa: Compassion

Dhyaana: Meditation

Divya: Divine

Dukkha: Sorrow (the onus of Buddhist quest)

Ekaagrata: One-pointedness

Eesaavaasyam idam

sarvam: All this is God-permeated.

Gnyaana: Gnosis, Realization, Awareness,

Enlightenment

Gnyaani: Gnostic, Realized being

Graam Svaraaj: Village autonomy; community self- rule

Grhastaashrama: The station of the house holder

Guna: Quality, attribute (see nirguna)

Gunaateeta: Beyond qualities

Jaagrat: Waking (see svapna and sushupti)

Jagat: World

Japa: Chant

Jeevaanmukta: One liberated in life

Jeevaanmukti: Liberation in one's life time

Jignyaasa: Quest for Knowledge

Kaama: Lust

Kaivalya: 'At-one-ment', 'al-one'

121

Karma: Action

Kartaa: Actor

Kartrtva: Doership

Kosa: Sheath

Krshna paksha: Dark lunar fortnight (see shukla paksha)

Krta: Done, accomplishment

Laghu: Easy, simple, elementary

Leela: Play

Lok sevaa: Serving people.

Maayaa: The 'phenomenate'; phenomenation'

Madhyamika: Middle way.

Mahaabhaava: Grand bhaava (see bhaava)

Mahaasoonya: Infinite Void

Maithuna: Coition, intercourse

Mamakaara: Meum, mine-identity

Manolaya: Mental accord

Manonaasa: Perishing of the mind (see amanaska,

Mrtamanas )

Mantra: Any mystic / occult formula generally

used for invocation or meditation

‘Mimete’: Imitant

Moksha, Mukti: Salvation, Liberation

Mouna: Silence

Mrtamanas: Dead I-less mind (Anaham- manas)

Mumukshu-tva: Quest for liberation

Naishkarmya: Non-doing (Nishkartrtva: Non-doership)

Neti: Not so

Niraasaa: Absence of desire/ hope.

Nirguna: Quality-less; non-identity (see guna and

saguna)

Nirvaana: Passing out, cessation; 'transphenomen-

ation'

Nishphala karma: Literally/ fruitless action - i.e., action

independent of outcome

Nishkartrtva: Non-doership

Nivrtti: In-going, involute, 'immanation' (see

pratiprasava)

Paapa: Sin

Pari-tyaaga: Grand abdication, supreme renunciation

(see tyaaga)

122

Parityaaga

Satyaagraha: Ultimate Satyagraha

Poorna: Whole, Perfect

Praana: Life-force

Pragnya: Awareness

Pragnyaana: Gnosis

Pragnyaanaghana: Plenary Awareness

Pramaana: Authority

Prapatti: Surrender

Pratiprasava: 'Immergence' (see nivrtti)

Prema: Love

Preyas: Pleasant, Pleasurable

Punya: Merit, meritorious

Raaga: Desire, craving, pleasing, melody

Rajas: The plane of activity; 'energony' (see

sattva and tamas)

Rajateeta Metanomy

Saadhana: Means

Saakshaatkaara: Trans-perception

Saatvik: Truthward, harmonious (see sattva)

Sad-guru: True guru

Saguna: With attributes, identity (see guna and

nirguna)

Sahaja: Natural

Samaadhi: Realized Awareness, At-one-ment

Samadrshti: Seeing all as equals

Samhaara: Annihilation, dissolution

Samsaara: Temporal, mundane, cycle of births and

deaths

Samskaara: Karmas of past births informing the

present

Sankalpa: Resolve, resolution

Sat: Being, Real

Satori: Instant illumination (in Zen)

Satsvaraaj Sanautonomy

Sattva: pro-verity (Sat: verity), Truthwardness;

inner purity and harmony. Sattvik: adj. of

Sattva

Satya: Truthful, truthfulness (in behaviour)

123

Satyaagraha: Upholding truthfulness; Richard B.Gregg

happily renders it 'Pacific Resistance'

Sevaa: Service

Shakti: Power, energy

Shiva: God as dissolver in the trinity (see

Brahma and Vishnu)

Shuddha: Pure

Shuddha Sattva: Pure Sattva, unalloyed with rajas, tamas

Shukla Paksha: Bright lunar fortnight (see krsna paksha)

Siddhi: Attainment, fruition, thaumaturgy

Soonya: Void

Sthita-pragnyata: Immutable, non-reactive, Awareness

Sushupti: Deep (dreamless) sleep (see jaagrat and

svapna)

Svapna: Dream (see jaagrat and Sushupti)

Taala : Rhythm, beat

Taantrik: Follower of tantra; adj. of tantra

Tamas: Darkness, ignorance (see sattva and rajas)

Tantra : A diversified, extra-vedic, esoteric,

tradition that projects reality as a

compound of male - female consciousness

and aims at such fusion through occult

practice of spells, rituals and meditations

Tapas: Austere meditation

Turiya: Beyond waking, dreaming, sleeping,

planes

Turiyaateeta: Transcending Turiya; Turiya sans body

consciousness; videhamukti.

Tyaaga: Sacrifice (see parityaaga)

Upaaya: Means

Upeya: End

Vaasana: Intrinisic predisposition; psychic imprint

carried over from earlier births

Vai: Indeed

Vichaara: Inquiry

Videhamukti: Turiyateeta; transcending Brahma-aakaar

– perception of all as Brahman even.

Vignyaana: Relative knowledge; gnyaana in its

empirical dimensions

Vishaada: Despondency, melancholy

124

Vishnu: God as preserver in the trinity (see

Brahma and Shiva)

Visishta: Distinctive

Vyaavahaarika: Phenomenal, empirical, cultural

Wei-wu-Wei: Doing -without-doing

Yagnya: Sacrifice

Zettel: Scrap of paper